


We'll Burn This Sacred Sky

by boldcreations



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Character Death, Clarke bashing, Comfort/Angst, Death, F/M, Gore, Original Female Character - Freeform, PTSD, Protective Bellamy, Romance, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Violence, badass octavia, because I just don't like her, depression (mentioned), unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 42,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boldcreations/pseuds/boldcreations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cyra spent so long in Solitary on the Ark, she didn't remember what it was to really breathe, to live. All she ever had was the voice of a prisoner in the cell next to her, her only friend. No name or face to know her by. However, when she is sent to the ground with ninety-nine other prisoners from the Sky Box, she finds that familiar voice, that one friend that she had while imprisoned-and the older brother that follows said friend like a shadow. On Earth once more, there's only one thing everyone wants to know.</p>
<p>What did you do?</p>
<p>Cyra strives to keep the reason for her confinement a secret, but the past has a way of rearing its head when you least wish it to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heroes of Our Time

**Author's Note:**

> Her name, for anyone who does not know it, is pronounce sigh-ruh. Cyra.

The solitary ward in the Sky Box was the least repaired; if someone had done something severe enough to be in solitary, they didn't need regular heating or oxygen flow. The rooms were frigid most of the time, the bed a slab of cold metal with a sheet thrown over and a blanket to keep you warm at night. It was cold, dark, oxygen deficient; it was disgusting.

It was home.

It would be the last home they had until they turned 18.

Then space would be their grave.

Cyra lay across her hard pallet, not even giving it the courtesy of calling it a bed, with her arms tucked behind her head. It was softer than the pillow she was provided. Her back ached and her joints felt like they were slowly fusing together from lack of movement, but there wasn't much that she could do inside that tiny cell. Every once and a while she'd will herself to do some pushups or crunches, but there wasn't much effort on her part.

Four years. She'd been inside that cell for almost four years.

Heaving out a long sigh that seemed to echo in the near empty room, Cyra half wondered if she actually saw her breath before her eyes.

She didn't have more time to debate on the pointless thought as the slot in her door opened up, a tray of food slid in across the floor, before the slot closed again, cutting off the blinding light that came in from the halls. The light in her room had burned out a couple of months back, so she was usually left in darkness. Now and then it would flicker back to life for a handful of seconds, but it never lasted more than that. Soon, she was left in darkness again.

This was one of those times.

She wondering if the regular prisoners were treated this way in the Sky Box, locked in windowless rooms with a door of solid metal, only openable from the outside.

Somehow, she doubted it.

" _Looks as disgusting as usual_ ," a voice suddenly said, drifting in through the grate from the cell next to hers. It was the only source of light for Cyra, since the divider had broken and fallen away years before. " _Light still out_?" her female neighbour asked a moment later, when Cyra hadn't replied.

"Yep," she answered, slinging her feet off of the bed and shuffling toward the tray. The small glow of light through the grate made the metal shine and allowed her to locate it more easily, but she was somewhat relieved that she couldn't actually see the food. With the way that it usually tasted, she had a hunch that it would look even worse. "Didn't even get a drink this time," she added on, noting the lack of cup once her hand skimmed carefully above the tray.

" _Neither did I_ ," the other girl answered, sounding pained. That was three days in a row now that they hadn't been given water with any of their meals. The thought only seemed to parch them further, but they never outwardly voiced their complaints.

Especially not to one another.

They didn't really socialize much, other than trying to find a way to pass the time. They never shared their names, their life stories. They didn't tell each other about their life before they were put into lockup. Everything personal, stayed personal. As soon as you told someone else that story, it was no longer yours. Their memories, their pasts, their names…it was all they had in solitary. Most importantly, they never told each other what they did to get thrown into lockup in the first place.

" _Looks like regurgitated vomit_."

Cyra cringed and fought the urge to toss the tray away. "Thanks for that, just what I needed to hear."

There was a bland, humourless chuckle from the other side before both fell silent. Forcing down their last meal of the day.

Sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, facing the grate, Cyra found herself wondering how old her verbal-companion would be. She knew that people in lockup were all ages, as she seen a couple over the years when she was escorted to other rooms, getting a medical check-up or her weekly shower. She once saw a girl that looked to be no more than ten, crying her eyes out with a pair of restraints on her wrists.

It made her sick.

Was her companion to turn eighteen soon? Would she be left alone in this box?

Technically, she should have been the one to abandon her companion, since she was nearly twenty years old. Her eighteenth birthday came and went, no sign of a hearing or death sentence. A couple of months later, she was finally called to stand before the counsel. The Chancellor had swayed the counsel to let her live due to reasons pertaining to her arrest, but she was to remain in lockup until her twentieth birthday, when she would then have a psych evaluation done to see if she could ever be integrated back into the Ark society.

She highly doubted that would come to pass.

Crawling over until she was sitting beside the grate, leaning on the cold metal wall, Cyra held her breath a moment. "Hey," she called suddenly, knowing that her companion heard her without saying anything in reply. "How old are you?"

There was silence through from the other side, leaving her to wonder if she had broken the silent rule. She'd asked something personal of her companion, more than likely causing her to clam up. She just hoped it didn't mean she'd never talk to her again.

" _Don't worry_ ," the sad voice answered after a moment. " _I'm not going anywhere for a while yet_."

Cyra found herself smiling despite the ache in her chest. Suddenly, her eyes stung and she felt as though she was going to cry. It had been a long time since someone had made her cry, but now she felt all of that pain, sadness, and loneliness come rushing back to her.

" _You_?"

Biting her lip and dropping her head against the wall, Cyra turned her face until her cheek pressed against the cold, grimy metal. She didn't want to answer, she didn't want to lie or give false hope to her companion, but she didn't want to rip it out of her, either.

"Might be," she finally answered, her voice cracking. "I might be."

On the other side of the wall, Octavia Blake was curled in on herself, her hand pressing to her mouth to silence the sobs that she wanted to badly to just let out. She'd known her fellow prisoner since her first day in solitary, after she'd been taken away from her brother. Pounding on the door, screaming and sobbing, she'd been a wreck. Then a voice had drifted through from the cell next to her, telling her a pointless, dry-humour story that Octavia couldn't remember to this day, but it had stopped her from crying.

She had been her distant friend since that day; a faceless, nameless friend that had embraced her so much more tightly that anyone could with a physical touch.

And she was going to die.

No on survived a sentencing after they left solitary, their crimes were too severe. For her friend to be telling her that she might be leaving soon it made Octavia ache, curl in on herself in loneliness and fear. She was barely seventeen. How long would she be alone in that cell with no one to talk to? Would someone take her friend's place, a stranger that would stain the memory of who had once lived in her place?

" _I'm sorry_ ," drifted through from the other side of the grate, leaving Octavia to clamp her hand more tightly over her mouth. This girl, this woman, had been so much stronger than her all along. She refused to let her hear her cry. Not since that first day had she allowed herself to succumb to the urge to cry, to scream. She'd fought it off.

She could keep fighting.

"So am I," Octavia answered tightly, feeling a headache beginning to press against her temples from withholding her tears.

They didn't talk after that, but both women remain next to the grate for hours into the day. It felt as though it helped to abate the loneliness somewhat, believing that two grates and a couple inches of empty space was the only thing separating them. Cyra was shivering in the chill of her cell, the thin, torn clothes that she was supplied as she got bigger not helping to fight off the cold of the solitary ward. Octavia had her blanket draped over her shoulders, but it wasn't much better than Cyra's thin sweater.

Dropping her head forward against her knees, Crya ignored the long strands of dark blonde hair that cascaded over her legs, having fallen lose from the tear of material which had bound it. She'd just have to search for it in the darkness later. It would probably be easier just to tear off a new one from the case on her pillow.

She never got the chance when the door to her cell was thrown open abruptly, making her flinch away from the blinding darkness. She tripped backward onto her side, one hand lifting to shield her eyes as the other propped her torso back up. "What?" she gasped out, trying to properly see the silhouettes that were blotched in the blinding light.

"Prisoner two-seven-nine, stand up and face the back wall," one of the guards ordered. Knowing that opposing them would lead to her getting a baton in the gut, Cyra pulled herself to her feet as she continued to blink and squint in disorientation, turning away from the men to approach the back wall of her small cell.

"Sooner than I thought," she muttered to herself, placing her palms against the cold metal that made up her entire cell.

"No talking," the second guard snapped at her.

Biting her tongue so as not to snap back, Cyra kept herself in place as one of the guards dropped something onto her bed—a case—and opened it with a creek of rusty hinges. She feared that it was a needle to inject her with something, but that didn't make any sense. "Hold out your right arm," the first guard ordered. When she didn't move fast enough, he grabbed her elbow himself and straightened her arm out to the side, banging her hand unintentionally against the wall.

"Hey!" she snapped, looking over her shoulder to glare at him.

However, they seemed to take this as a threat, since she was suddenly slammed against the wall with the full weight of the other guard's body. "We told you not to talk," he growled into her ear. Her right arm was still extended, prepared, and she almost screamed when the searing pain of needles jabbing into her skin made her body lock up in pain.

Without thinking on her actions, her urge to defend herself against pain, Cyra threw her head back to collide with the face of the guard pressing against her. A sickening crunch told her that she had either broken his nose or his cheek bone. His shout of pain alerted other guards and before long there was more weight pressing her against the metal wall. Her mind was screaming at her to run, her body beginning to thrash in panic.

She didn't know what was going on!

"Let me go!" she suddenly screamed, her heart beginning to race as the hands of men fall all over her person, restraining her arms, pressing against her back, keeping her from lashing out again. " _Let me go_!" her voice echoed off the walls of the cell, more than likely reaching through to many other cells in the hallway in the process.

She didn't want to worry her companion.

"Put her out."

A jab against her neck warned her of the oncoming side-effect, and within moments Cyra's eyes were growing heavy, the sedative like a burning liquid through her blood. Falling limp against the wall, she had yet to even take notice of the new silver band that encased her right wrist, blood streaming along her hand where the sharp prongs had ruptured her skin.

In the hallway, Octavia was thrashing against the guard that was removing her from her cell, hearing her friend's screaming voice from the room next to her. What was happening? Looking down the length of the hallway, all of the doors were open and prisoners were being pulled out with identical brands on each of their wrists. Her own wrist throbbed with the device in her flesh.

"Wait, no!" she shouted, trying to get back toward her friend's cell. What were they doing to her?

"Just go quietly," the guard holding her warned, keeping an iron grip on her bicep. He was twice her size, so she knew that no matter what she did she'd never be able to get away from him. "I don't want to force you." He began dragging her in the direction the other prisoners were being taken, her booted feet sliding on the slick metal floors as she tried to stop him.

"But-"

Her argument cut short as she turned to look toward her friend's cell, just in time to see four guards step out, one with a busted nose, and the two in the back hauling a limp body between them. Each had an arm in their grasp, keeping her up, but her head was tipped back and made it impossible to get a look at her. Pale skin, a long neck that was much too thin, and a shirt that hung off of her body like rags on a skeleton.

How long had she been in solitary? She'd never said before.

"Move!" her guard finally shouted, pulling on her arm so harshly that she was nearly lifted off of her feet. In the next instant, she'd lost sight of her friend, without even seeing her face. However, there had been a metal wrist band on her just like everyone else, which meant that whatever was going to happen to Octavia, would happen to her friend as well.

Perhaps, they'd see each other again.


	2. Ours to Reclaim

It took one tremendous jolt to wake Cyra up, her head snapping back against the seat that she had been strapped into while she was unconscious. People all around her were screaming, panicking, and all Cyra could do was try to distinguish between the light from artificial lights and a white smoke that was pouring out of broken pipes. The collision with the back of the seat, which was not cushioned at all, had left her reeling and somewhat dizzy.

A guy next to her was screaming louder than the girl across from her and it was only make her head ache more. Her wrist was still throbbing from whatever they had done to her back in her cell, but she didn't dare open her eyes to check what it was. And almost as quickly as she had woken to all of the shaking, it stopped.

A hush fell over the occupants inside of the ship as Cyra finally allowed herself to look around, the lights flickering on and off sporadically and making it hard to take in her surroundings. There were more people here than she had been around since she was a child. It made her feel claustrophobic, which made her close her eyes again.

"Listen," someone called from across the way. "No machine hum."

"Whoa," another boy mumbled, more than likely near the first. "That's a first."

The ships locks finally released, allowing them to unlock themselves from the harnesses keeping them in their seats. Cyra was a bit slower about it, letting everyone else rush from their seats so that she wasn't crowded in around them anymore. Staying behind as everyone else began a mad-dash for the lower level, Cyra rubbed at the back of her head with her left hand as she finally took a careful look at her right.

The only upside to being in a black cell for so long was that her eyes were very good at adjusting to the darkness. A metal band was now wrapped around her wrist, anchored firmly in place by prongs that she could feel were stuck deep into her flesh. Flexing her hand, she was at least happy to know that it didn't interfere with her motor skills.

Only the odd person was still on the level with her, also making their way down to the lower levels. However, the entire ship shook when the doors on the ground level were opened, the hard-lock seal on the door depressurizing. Even from where she was, Cyra could feel the sudden rush of wind against her exposed neck and face, causing her to inhale deeply.

"Air," she mumbled, rising to her feet and making her way over to the ladders.

There was a moment of complete silence, of awe that left the 100 standing in the dropship, staring out into the new world that awaited them. It was Earth, warm and green and clean. There was a freshness to the air that they hadn't known their entire lives, leaving them struck with the realization that  _this_  was Earth. This was their  _true_  home.

Bright, natural light filtered through from the bottom floor, leaving Cyra to stand at the top of the ladder, yet to begin her journey down, as she stared in amazement at the beautiful pureness of this light. It wasn't the harshness of florescent lighting, or the annoying flicker of a dying bulb that left her wanting nothing more than to break it.

_Birds_. She could hear  _birds_.

A smile broke across her face, the first real smile that she had let herself experience in God knows how long.

Octavia stood at the bottom of the ramp, only one step away from the  _ground_. It was such an unreal thought. And yet, as she let herself drop down that last step, she confirmed that it was  _reality_. The soil was soft beneath her boots, letting her sink a bit before holding her steady. It was so sturdy, but soft and pliable. Breaking into a broad grin, she threw her hands into the air.

" _We're back, bitches!_ "

All at once, the one hundred fled from the dropship in one long herd, rushing into the surrounding forest as their cheers pierced the air. No one could contain their happiness as they rushed through the open space, the most space they'd ever known, taking in deep heaves of fresh, clean air. No more oxygen-deprivation.

Cyra stepped more slowly toward the large door of the dropship, the ramp her last obstacle to the ground. She didn't shy away from the blinding sunlight, she didn't hesitate to step into its powerful rays, looking over the young adolescents that were cheering and racing around like banshees through the night. A gust of wind swept at her face, taking the hair from over her face and clearing her sights to the beauty of the world.

She laughed.

It felt  _amazing_.

Stepping down off the ramp, letting the feeling of the soft Earth draw her in, Cyra tipped her head back as she continued to laugh, unable to fathom that this was her fate all along. She'd been so afraid that she would be met with cold, dark space that this was overwhelming her fragile state of mind. She wasn't dead; actually, she couldn't be more alive.

"Hey," someone called from nearby, a younger boy that was grinning wide enough that it creased his cheeks. "You okay?"

Cyra shook her head. "I think I want to cry," she answered in complete honestly.

All he did was grin back. "Believe me, I don't think anyone would judge you for that today."

And then he was running; running and shouting and celebrating, welcomed into the fray of adolescents that were  _free_.

So she ran, too.

Taking off through the trees, she leapt over fall trees or protruding roots, running and running with no destination in mind. Only when her lungs burned and her muscles seemed to quake with exertion did she finally stop, dropping to her knees as she panted and heaved for air. Tipping her head back, Cyra took in the towering trees that made her feel absolutely miniscule beneath them.

Such strong, secure things had been obliterated in a toxic war, and had grown again. They had reclaimed their place on Earth.

So would mankind.

Retracing her trail in the dirt, the crash site was much calmer when Cyra returned to the others, no longer feeling the will to run. She had exhausted her urge to flee, to take off like someone was chasing her. It seemed that most people felt the same, since a lot of people were sitting or lying in the foliage, others rummaging around and collecting ruins or just inspecting things.

Cyra fell to sit on an old tree, having fallen a long time ago and already covered in moss, and kicked her long legs out before her as she blew a piece of hair out of her face. Now her legs hurt. After being confined to a box with the odd outing now and then, she really wasn't ready to exert herself so much.

But it really did feel  _amazing_.

She didn't immediately take notice to the survivors around her massing toward the drop ship until someone rushed passed her, clearly trying to get to see what was happening. She was tempted not to get up, but at the same time she didn't want to be the only one who had no clue what was going on. Rising onto her somewhat rested legs, Cyra made her way into the general vicinity of the gathering. She only wanted to be close enough to hear what was being said.

"-the hungrier we are, the harder this'll be," a blonde girl was saying from near the center of the crowd. "How long do you think we'll last without those supplies? We're looking at a twenty mile trek, okay? So if we want to get there before dark, we need to leave. Now."

Cyra was certain that she had missed something important, considering she seemed to be the only who not aware of these 'supplies'. She must have missed the 'Earth Drop Briefing' while she'd still been unconscious from the sedatives they gave her.

"I got a better idea," an older looking man answered, standing next to a girl with long, light brown hair. "Find it for us. Let the privileged do the hard work for a change."

A cheer of agreement went up through the crowd, voicing their dislike for the blonde girl and the dark skinned boy beside her. She wasn't too sure who the blonde was, but she knew that the guy was the Chancellor's son. "You're not listening," Wells began. "We all need to go!"

When another boy stepped up and shoved Wells roughly from behind, Cyra repressed the urge to heave a sigh. It was ridiculous how quickly things could escalate between social classes—she wasn't a stranger to the tension between them. She'd always lived poor before she as locked up, looked down upon by those of a higher standing within the Ark.

She couldn't blame people for lashing out, but attacking the Chancellor's son wasn't going to do anything.

Apparently she wasn't the only one to think this, since another of the survivors dropped down from the wreckage of the ship, interrupting the fight that had been brewing in the center of the crowd. Shaking her head, Cyra turned to leave.

"Hey, Spacewalker!"

Stopping dead in her tracks, Cyra felt her heart lurch in her chest.  _That voice_. Turning to look over her shoulder, her eyes landed on the brunette that had been standing with the older boy from before. She'd walked closer to the center of the group, leaving the man standing by himself.

"Rescue me next," she flirted, getting laughs of amusement from the crowd of prisoners. It worked to diffuse the tensions that had been mounting. She wasn't sure whether the girl meant to do that or not, but it was effective enough.

People started to disperse, but Cyra couldn't bring herself to move as her eyes followed the girl. Her verbal-companion. The man dragged her away to talk with her, but she clearly didn't want to have to deal with him, looking agitated. Shifting her eyes between the two, Cyra realized why she'd been in lock-up. They looked only a couple of years apart in age but they were incredibly similar in appearance. They were brother and sister.

And the ark only allowed one child per family.

Wiping at her face with her hands, which she hadn't realized were so cold until that moment, Cyra tried to wrap her mind around the fact that the girl she had been talking to was locked up  _for being born_. No wonder she had been so terrified, kicking and screaming at the door since the moment they closed her in solitary. She'd never really had freedom before.

When she volunteered herself to go with the others for supplies, Cyra stepped forward almost too quickly.

"I'm in, too," she said in a solid voice, startling the people present. "Been locked up for four years, could use the exercise." The blonde looked like she wanted to protest, but she couldn't exactly refuse a helping hand. They'd need as many as they could collect in order to get the supplies back successfully. Cyra almost didn't want to look at her solitary friend; she was afraid that she couldn't recognize her voice even after a year together.

However, she gathered up her nerve and looked up.

She was staring at her with curious, focused eyes. "Those four years…" she started, waving a hand to silence her complaining brother. "Were they…in solitary?"

Cyra nodded hesitantly. The people around them looked confused—some of them annoyed, since they rather wanted to get moving—but neither really paid them any kind. "Yea, a complete dump. A friend of mine once said the food was like-"

"-Regurgitated vomit," they said together, a smile breaking out on both of their faces. Then the brunette was rushing at her, throwing herself onto the older woman in a hug that could have strangled Cyra if she wasn't holding onto her just as tightly.

"Oh, my God! It's you! I mean, it's you! You're really tall," she said as she backed off to get a look at her properly. She hadn't really gotten a proper look when they'd been dragged from their cells, Cyra being unconscious, so she was taking in the tall woman's appearance for the first time. Her hair was a lighter shade, almost blonde, and her skin was they palest white she'd ever seen, framing a pair of striking eyes—two different colours! A green and a blue!—that matched with the forest around them and the sky above them. She really was tall, almost as tall as her brother if she was going to guess.

Cyra scoffed and lifted a hand to hover over her friend's head. "What're you talking about? You're the short one."

Shoving at the arm over her head, the smile couldn't be wiped from her face.

"Octavia, who is this?" the man finally asked, baffled at the familiarity the two showed.

"Octavia," Cyra mumbled, testing out the name. "Suits you."

"You didn't know her name and yet you're friends?" the blonde privileged asked, raising an eyebrow in a way that reminded Cyra to the way the guards had stared down at her, like she was filth.

"First rule of solitary," Cyra began.

"You have nothing but your name, give it away and you are a number," Octavia answered, glancing over to her brother. He had been the one to give her the name Octavia when she was born; she'd never give that away. Turning back to Cyra, she extended her hand in mock introduction. "Octavia Blake," she said enthusiastically, her smiling contagious as Cyra cracked up in a grin as well.

Her hand was rougher than Octavia's, having been accustomed to labour work before she went to prison. Octavia's, however, seemed to hold a healthier glow to it. Cyra really was the whitest person she had ever seen, having been locked away for years in a black box. "Cyra Whyte," she returned.

Wells looked to her in what she immediately recognized as distress; clearly, he knew why she'd been put into solitary. Meeting his startled eyes, she held them in a steady gaze, as though daring him to tell everyone what she had done. If he knew the real story, than he would know of her innocence. That didn't mean everyone else would understand, so she'd rather her secret remain just that.

Wisely, Wells looked away from her as he swallowed thickly, looking down at the blonde beside him. "So," she began again, looking to the blonde as well. "When do we leave?"

"Right now," she answered, nodding to her as though silently thanking her for putting them back on track. "Are you sure you're okay to come, you look a bit…" she trailed off, her eyes following along Cyra's thin body.

"Malnourished?" Cyra supplied with a cold stare, her uncommon eyes suddenly much less lively as Octavia cowered down just slightly, remembering the lack of food they had throughout a week. "One meal a day will do that. When they remembered to feed us," she added on, causing the surrounding people to shift uncomfortably, trying not to meet the stares of the two women who had been in solitary.

"Were you really there for four years?" the kid with the goggles to her left blurted out, getting an elbow to the gut by his friend.

Giving a cynical smile, Cyra didn't answer.

"Let's go," she encouraged instead, jerking her head in the direction that the group had been heading in before Cyra interrupted them. Slipping her hands into her pockets, she left them behind her as Octavia rushed to catch up, shooting one last reassuring look at her brother while following her friend from the drop site. Bellamy watched after them, his eyes trained on the two women in the lead. He wasn't comfortable with having his sister leave his side so soon after getting her back, but he could understand her desire to move and be free. She really had been locked up all of her life, and he didn't want to be the cause of that anymore.

The woman that she was wish, however, gave him a strange feeling. She just looked out of place, like he felt. She didn't look under eighteen.


	3. A Mother's Touch

Cyra didn't stay in the lead for long, falling back with Octavia to let Clarke and Finn take over. She was mesmerised with the sights and sounds around them, letting her fingers skim trees as she was passing or taking a second to inhale the smell of leaves or moist bark. Octavia was doing much the same, fascinated by everything that she saw. It made for a bit of a slower trek, but none of them could really help themselves. Except for Clarke, the girl with a one track mind.

Leaping up, her height allowed her to catch a low-hanging branch in her hands and pull down, causing a showering of water droplets to land on her and the brunette at her side like simulated rain. They two girls couldn't help from laughing joyfully at the ticklish feeling, shaking the moisture from their faces as Cyra released the branch.

"So, what does Cyra mean, anyway? I mean, where's it from?" Octavia asked after they had been walking for a while. "Bellamy named me after the younger sister of the Emperor Augustus."

"It's…Greek, I think? My mother named me and she died when I was still young, so I don't really remember. I know it means sun, though. Ironic, considering I've been deprived of it so long," Cyra answered. "Also ironic that I am the pastiest person on the dropship and my last name is Whyte."

Octavia laughed at the older woman's joke, relieved that she was able to jest about her incarceration instead of hanging on to the negatives. "You've moved past what happened pretty well," she pointed out, looking carefully at Cyra's face. Instead of growing serious or defensive, she smiled wider.

"We're on Earth, out of our cells and finally free. Sure, there're some bumps in the road, but I can live with that."

Returning her smile, Octavia nodded along and sped up her pace when she realized that the two were beginning to fall behind from the others. Cyra followed after, snatching a long fern from the ground so she could smell the strong greenery. They were approaching an area that was covered in clusters of purple flowers, rather beautiful, but Cyra found looking at the trees more interesting than looking at flowers.

She had made herself lightheaded when they first began their hike through the forest, inhaling deeper and deeper as she greedily tried to take in as much oxygen as she could. After being deprived of it for so long, it was hard for her to deny herself something that she had long ago been denied. The threat of radioactivity didn't really scare her, if they were going to get sick or injured from it then they already would have.

The faint chill of the season didn't do much to her anymore, moving around warmed her up even as her breath fogged in front of her. She wasn't exactly looking forward to the thought of sleeping in the cold, but it would probably still be warmer than that cell she had back on the Ark. Tucking her hands back into her pants pockets, Cyra turned her eyes upward, to the overhanging trees that blocked out the strongest of the sunlight. She supposed that was best, none of them were particularly acclimated to the sunlight on Earth.

She was forced to stop and pay attention when the two boys in front of her stopped, watching as Finn slyly tucked a purple flower into Octavia's hair. "Now  _that_ , my friend, is game," Jasper commented to his friend, Monty, as Cyra rolled her eyes from behind them. Someone like Octavia, who'd been locked away her entire life, would unfortunately be swayed by something as simple as being handed a flower.

"That, my friend, is poison sumac," Monty replied, picking one of the flowers from beside him.

"What?" Octavia demanded, quickly knocking the flower free form her hair in a panic.

"Relax, it's medicinal," Cyra soothed as she passed them, not wanting to get stuck behind the boys that probably wanted nothing more than to get into someone's pants at that point. She did not miss her adolescent years.

"She's right," Monty assured as Octavia continued to discretely worry, wiping her hands on her pants to remove any poison. "They're calming, actually." He even went as far as to bite into the plant, showing Octavia that it was harmless as he chewed away. Cyra wrinkled her nose, imagining the taste.

"His family grows all the pharmaceuticals on the Ark," Jasper explained, motioning to his friend.

Up ahead of them, Clarke had noticed that they were lagging behind, slowed by the scenery and botany lesson for the day. "Hey, guys, would you try to keep up!"

"Come on, Clarke, how do you block all this out?" Finn retorted as he motioned broadly to the greenery around them, including the medicinal flowers that Cyra was sure to remember for a particularly stressful day. She could probably make a tea out of them, even though it would more than likely end up tasting like bitter grass.

"Well, it's simple; I wonder; why haven't we seen any animals?" The question was a fairly valid one and Cyra found herself once more looking to the trees, taking in the fact that there wasn't a bird in sight—or hearing range, the only sound in the forest were from insects. "Maybe it's because there are none. Maybe we've already been exposed to enough radiation to  _kill_  us."

Taking in a deep breath, Cyra couldn't bring herself to worry over it.

"Sure is pretty though," Clarke finish, turning back to their original path. "Come on."

Beside her, Octavia leaned in as she spoke in a low tone. "Someone should slip her some poison sumac." Fighting against a grin, Cyra gently pushed Octavia with her shoulder before she stepped to follow the blonde, her boots crunching dried leaves and sticks beneath her weight.

"So, I've gotta know what you guys did to get busted," Finn starting, hoping to keep some form of conversation going. Just walking blindly in a straight line wasn't exactly entertaining.

Monty spoke up first. "Sumac's not the only herb in the garden, if you know what I mean."

"Someone forgot to replace what we took," Jasper added on, not even having to look at Monty to stake the blame. Cyra figured that it was something light that they had gotten busted for; they were too timid and awkward to have done anything serious. She'd heard rumors about Finn, so she already knew that he had gone on an illegal spacewalk and that's what landed him in the SkyBox. "What about you, Octavia? What'd they get you for?"

Glancing back over her shoulder as she slowed her pace, Cyra watched Octavia's expression darken at the question. "Being born," she mumbled out, hurrying her stride until she jogged past Cyra to catch up with Clarke a couple of yards ahead. Hearing the comment, the four slowed their stride to watch her leave.

"That is so not game," Monty commented, getting a hit from Jasper. "What about you, Cyra? Said you were in solitary, right? Why?"

Still watching Octavia, Cyra answered blandly, "Something bad."

"We all did something bad, it's why we're here," Jasper pointed out, laughing at the answer that she gave them. Glancing to them over her shoulder, Finn shifting his attention to her discretely as well, Cyra watched the amusement bleed from their faces at the dead look in her eyes.

"Something worse," she corrected before following after the other two women in their little troupe of survivors.

This time, Monty reached over to hit Jasper.

"Aren't you on a roll with the ladies?"

"Shut up."

Octavia waved Cyra forward silently, her face once more showing her excitement. Crouching down alongside her and Clarke, she followed where Clarke was pointing further into the small field in front of them. A couple of yards in the distance stood a deer, grazing at the moist grass. It hadn't realized they were there yet, leaving it unconcerned and calm, still.

Cyra found herself smiling at the sight of it, feeling Finn slip in beside her to get closer to Clarke. "No animals, huh?" he pointed out, grinning. It was a relief to see something else alive on the planet, knowing that it was habitable after all. Creeping forward, Finn stayed low as he tried to get closer for a better look at the large animal.

Only a couple of steps in and his foot landed on a dried stick, snapping it easily under his weight and causing an echoing crack to ring through the clearing. Immediately, the deer was alerted to their presence and raised its head to look at them. The second it was looking in their direction, they collectively cringed back with a sound of shock and disgust; the deer had two faces.

Even only glimpsing it briefly, Cyra could see that it had been born that way, with a second face forming out of the first, useless and only partially formed. There was exposed tissue, red and raw, that made her stomach twist at the sight.

"What the-"

The deer took off before they could continue to inspect it, hopping over fallen trees and bushes with ease until it was far from sight.

"Well, at least we know the radiation won't kill us," Cyra commented finally, breaking the tense silence that had fallen. "Might have some two headed babies, though."

"That's not funny," Clarke snapped back at her with a glare.

Cyra stared back at her with a deadpan expression. "It wasn't meant to be. I just watched a two headed deer run away from us." Rising back up to her full weight, Cyra repeated what Clarke had said earlier. "Sure is pretty, though."

Octavia stood up beside her, dusting off her pants before following the older woman. One by one, the others fell in behind, continuing their way to Mount Weather. Cyra didn't really speak much with them, but she listened to their conversations, about the lives on the Ark and what it was like in the SkyBox. Apparently Clarke had been in modified Solitary, locked in a cell adjacent to the SkyBox instead of Solitary Hall like her and Octavia. Even in prison she'd been given the best accommodations available. It made Cyra want to curl her lip in a sneer, but she pressed down the offensive and rather ugly urge.

Hearing that the people on the Ark were going to die didn't bother her much, either. She didn't have anyone on the Ark to miss, family or friends, so she wasn't very concerned with the prospect of them dying. They'd locked her up for four years, left her to rot in a box that couldn't even pass as a jail cell, and so she fully agreed when Octavia said to float them all.

They had gone and dug their own grave, why shouldn't they be forced to lie in it?

Stepping onto a large cluster of rock, Cyra found her mood lightening at the appearance of a river just before her. The water didn't smell completely fresh, more like it had a large quantity of algae in it which turned it green, but it was  _water_.

Octavia ran up beside her, wearing the matching smile of happiness on her face at the sight of the softly flowing river. Stepping to the ledge, Cyra didn't see as her younger friend began stripping off her clothes, tossing them to the rock as the other guys ran to catch up. Glancing over her shoulder, Cyra had to do a double-take at the sight of Octavia in her underwear, bra and undershirt, leaving a lot of skin open to the chilled air.

"Octavia, what are you doing?" Clarke yelled as the brunette rushed up to where Cyra was looking over the water.

"Care to join me?" she asked before glancing over at the guys one last time before she leapt off of the rock and into the shallow waters. Cyra just shook her head with a laugh as she watched her friend slick her hair back pleasurably, relishing in the water, before ducking down to give the illusion of deep water. The others ran over to catch up, beginning to smile as well when they realized that there was a river.

"We can't swim," Jasper pointed out, seeming sheepish to admit to it.

"No," Octavia agreed. "But we can stand." Standing up once more revealed the water to reach just below her ribcage, giggling happily to have tricked them. Grinning up to Cyra, she motioned happily for the pale woman to join her. She knew that Cyra was a bit self-conscious about the pale state of her skin, and was momentarily worried that she would be too shy to strip down.

However, Cyra surprised her by immediately toeing off her boots, revealing her white feet, before she stripped off her sweater that covered her arms. Her black undershirt was a lot like Octavia's, thin and littered with slight holes, but it showed off the definition of her collar bone and slenderness of her ribcage. It was then that Octavia realized she wasn't as malnourished as Clarke had been thinking, but was just  _thin_. The lift of her arms as she shucked off her sweater revealed her prominent hip bones and tight, flat stomach.

Monty and Jasper were excitedly pulling their clothes off while Finn tried to convince Clarke to jump into the water, all prompted by Octavia's excited splashing in the water.

Cyra had been reaching to undo the buckle keeping her pants up when Jasper spoke up. "Octavia, get out of the water!"

Immediately, everyone stopped stripping to look out over the river, where something was approaching fast behind the brunette. "Get out!" Cyra nearly screamed, watching as Octavia turned to look at what had caused Jasper to panic. Whatever it was, it was moving fast and heading straight for Octavia. The closer it got, the easier it was to see what was heading their way.

"Get out of the water, now!" Jasper shouted, rushing to the edge of the rocks.

It was a snake—a massive, black snake. Cyra didn't know if it was evolution or radiation, but she was certain that snakes were not that big or that fast before mankind had to flee into space in a nuclear war.

Octavia didn't even have time to turn before the snake reached her, taking her thigh in its powerful jaws and pulling her underwater. " _Octavia_!" Cyra screamed at the top of her lungs, watching the younger girl disappear under the water before she was pulled away from the rock ledge. Her arms flailed above the water for a moment before the snake dove deeper, dragging her out of view.

Cyra rushed along the rocks, following where the snake had pulled her before she disappeared. Her eyes were wide with fear, her already pale face losing any colour she had. Cyra refused to look away from the water, waiting for even the faintest ripple that would suggest her friend was still alive. Her heart was pounding in her chest so hard she was beginning to feel light headed, her throat tightening to the point that she wouldn't breathe.

Finally, Octavia broke the surface of the water again, immediately letting lose a scream as her arms instinctively searched for something to grab on to, hoping to get away from the sharp teeth clamped into her thigh. Taking off at a dead run, Cyra could hear Clarke shout after her but didn't stop to look back as her feet left the rocky ledge, lunging over the green water and hitting with a splash.

The water pressed in around Cyra immediately, the shock of the cold water freezing her muscles for only a second before Cyra was shooting back up to her feet, slipping on the mossy rocks beneath for a moment. Her hands scrambled along the rock, lungs screaming for air, as she eyes stung and squinted against the murky water. Blearily, she could see the ominous form of the snake rocketing toward her from the deeper waters.

Finally, her hand found purchase on a decent sized rock, large enough to weigh a bit but small enough that she could take its weight with one hand.

Even through the water, Cyra could hear Octavia's subdued screams and the shouts from the other survivors, but she focused only on the snake as it drew closer to her kicking legs. Drawing herself in, Cyra dug her toes into the looser rocks beneath the moss, giving her some leverage, before she swung forward with the rock as the snake finally reached her.

For a moment, all she could see were teeth and scales a foot from her face, open and waiting for a meal. Throwing her arm around with all her might, difficult as that was beneath the water, Cyra slammed the rock into the side of the snake's head, throwing it off course and causing it to knock into her shoulder on its way past her, saving her from getting bitten. The speed the snake was moving threw her back into the rocks, scraping the bared skin of her shoulder and arm but otherwise leaving no damage.

As soon as the snake had passed her, the woman jumped to her feet and turned back to the rocks that she had leapt from. Finn was there the second she broke the surface, grabbing at her arms before she'd even raised them to lift herself up, and pulled her from the water. "Are you insane?" he was shouting, but Cyra was just inhaling air and spitting water as she looked around.

On the shore outside the forest, Octavia was lying across the rocks with Jasper, both soaked to the bone.

"Octavia!" she gasped out, forcing herself onto her legs, ignoring the sting in her shoulder when she used her arms, and immediately joined Clarke and Monty as they ran for the other two. Her feet stung from the rocks that bit into it, but Cyra still ran faster than the others to get to Octavia and Jasper. "Are you okay?" she asked the moment she fell to kneel beside the younger woman, briefly spotting the bite on her leg that the snake had used to drag her around. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked, taking Octavia's trembling cheeks and forcing her to look into her eyes.

"We have to stop the bleeding," Clarke began as she moved Octavia's leg for a better look.

Cyra didn't hesitate to strip off her undershirt and give it to Clarke, watching the blonde tear into the material so create strips, using one to tie above the bite so she wasn't losing all of her blood. Cyra ignored the chill of the air as it hit her exposed, wet skin and instead watched as Octavia pulled a shaking Jasper into her arms.

"Thank you," she breathed out, overwhelmed and tired.

"Note to self: next time, save the girl," Monty jested, lighting the situation as Clarke continued to work on Octavia's thigh.

"Yea, but I still think Cyra's got bigger balls than you, Jasper," Finn laughed, grasping Cyra's pale shoulder and squeezing. When Octavia looked up at her friend in surprise, Finn smirked and explained. "Crazy women jumped in to distract the thing. Didn't hesitate."

Reaching forward to take Octavia's offered hand, Cyra laughed along with him as her body shook with abating adrenaline. "Only just got to meet you in person, wasn't about to let you die." The rest of them were too focused on Octavia and Jasper to realize that Clarke had stopped tying the ripped shirt onto the bite wound, her eyes locked on what she could see of Cyra's back. Her skin stretched taut over rib bones, pale as snow. It made it all the more simple to see the angry pink scars that cross-crossed just along her shoulder blades.

The lines were clean, stitched. Clarke had no problem recognizing the job done—after all, it was her mother's handiwork.


	4. From a Grave of Bones

Cyra woke up to someone shifting on top of her, immediately alerting her to the fact that she was not alone in her cell, back on the Ark, in Solitary. Her eyes flew open, blinking against the sudden light that was starting to bleed through the trees as night progressed into early morning. Glancing down confirmed that she had somehow gone from sleeping by herself to having Jasper's head lying on her stomach, Octavia doing the same to him, with Monty draped over Cyra's legs, leaning on Octavia's good thigh. Somehow, through the night, they'd all curled in around one another for warmth and ended up a tangle of bodies.

"Rise and shine!"

The sudden shout of Finn's voice startled them all into jolting up, getting a hiss of pain from the two women when their sore limbs protested the movement. Cyra hadn't realized how bad her shoulder was until she went to sleep on it the night before. It was minor in comparison to Octavia's thigh wound, but it stung like a bitch when it rubbed her sweater.

"What the hell, man?" Jasper groaned as he sat up, adjusting the goggles that had fallen lopsided during the night. Octavia sat up immediately when she realized that she'd been lying on the guy, causing Cyra to smirk and give her a suggestive look, trying to tease the girl. She just sneered back a moment before she and Monty detangled and they all dragged themselves up from the dirt.

"Finn and I were talking," Clarke began as they all shook themselves awake, Cyra helping Octavia stay on her feet when her leg trembled slightly in discomfort. "We think we should go back to the river, try and find another way across. It's in the direct path to Mount Weather, and we don't know how far we'd have to walk to get around it."

"Look for what, exactly? A bridge?" Jasper asked rhetorically, helping wipe dirt from the back of his friend's jacket when he couldn't reach it.

"Maybe we could find a section of river that thins out, or is too shallow for the snake," Finn proposed, arguing their point.

Cyra let out a long sigh. "It's worth a shot," she agreed, getting an exasperated look from Octavia. "If we go back now, the rest of the camp is going to demand where the food is. They're not going to be happy if we go back with the problem of a snake."

"It nearly took Octavia's leg off!"

"They didn't see that. Even showing them the bite won't do much good. There are a lot of angry kids back there, looking for someone to place blame. We're the only ones that have a responsibility at the moment and as soon as we fail, that anger's going to be directed at  _us_." Looking over to Clarke as she spoke, she hoped to convey her annoyance her for the situation. Clarke was well aware that no one liked her, called her privileged and spoiled. Now, she'd dragged others into it. "Also, we do  _need_  that food."

"I'm sure you all feel just as hungry as I do," Finn pointed out, getting nods of agreement from the others.

"Fine, we'll go and  _try_ ," Octavia agreed reluctantly, testing the weight that she was able to put on her injured leg before stepping away from Cyra. They were soon on their way back toward the river, retracing their steps from the evening before. The sun was rising quickly, illuminating their way through the clusters of trees. "I feel like we're walking to our doom," Octavia muttered to Cyra as the rocky shore came into view, causing the older woman to snicker and wrap an arm around her shoulders in comfort.

"You'll be fine; we know what's out there now."

There was still a morning mist coming off of the river, shrouding the area in a thin, white fog. Searching around the river, there were no shallow sections, no rocks that crossed through high enough to keep them safe. Nothing but water and trees.

"Cyra could always jump in and distract it again," Finn commented sarcastically, getting smacked on the arm from Octavia while Cyra gave a tired glare. She wasn't going to be jumping into that river again; she'd probably shortened her life by a couple of years after the near-death experience she'd had already. "I'm kidding!"

"What if we used those vines, swing across?" Jasper asked suddenly, pointing up to the trees that stretched high above both them and the river. "With enough of a swing, it would work, right?" Everyone turned to look over the clusters of vines that he was pointing at.

"They're too thin on their own," Monty commented first, trying to see what Jasper had. "But if someone can get into those trees and knock more loose, we could wind them together, make them stronger. It's actually not a bad thought." At the mention of climbing trees, all eyes swivelled over to Cyra. She was tall and thin, meaning she could reach the branches and fit on them easier than the guys or Clarke, Octavia's leg leaving her out of the running.

Cyra flinched at the attention that turned to her before she huffed and tossed the rock she'd been rolling between her hands. "First you want me as bait, now I'm climbing trees?" she snapped.

"You're thin, tall and not injured," Finn answered. "It's not too bad, you just have to untangle some as you climb up and we'll deal with the rest down here." Cyra's shoulders slumped, knowing that she wasn't going to change their minds since they'd all turned against her already. Grumbling under her breath as she approached the trees, Cyra took a moment to look up, memorizing branches that would be best to step on and others that looked too thin or weathered to hold her weight.

"After this, you all owe me a portion or your food," she ordered, pointing to them one by one. "Except Octavia, since she can't climb anyway."

"Ha!" Octavia huffed, smirking at Finn beside her.

"Alright, a ration from each of us. Now  _up_."

Even with her height, the lowest branch was a bit of a distance, so Cyra had to back up before getting a running start and jump off the tree trunk to reach, barely catching it the first time. Her shoulder's soreness came back full force, but she ignored it and pulled herself up in a chin-up, swinging onto the branch once she was high enough. The others watched from the ground, stepping away now and them when Cyra knocked free branches or sticks that rained down on them. She did her best to unweave the vines as she went, forced to stretch uncomfortably far from the safety of the tree a couple of times.

"You're doing good, just a couple more!" Jasper called up, collecting the freed vines in his hands and gauging how strong they were by hanging his weight on them.

Cyra's shoulder was getting cramped up when she got closer to the top, sitting with one of the sturdier branches between her legs, ankles crossed beneath her. She was doing her best to free the vine without knocking too much debris into her eyes, but she still had to stop a couple of times and blink leaves or twigs from around her eyes.

"If you need any more I'll have to climb to the other tree," she finally called down, only able to get three more vines for Jasper's collection.

"We'll see how this works, come on down," Monty called after consulting with his friend, who was using one of the vines to wrap around the rest, weaving it round and round from the top, down. It was a bit of a challenge, since he was on the ground and didn't have much leverage. They couldn't even get Cyra to help from the top since the branches around were too thin and far from the trunk of the trees.

Making her way down much faster than she'd been able to get to the top, Cyra hit the ground with a grunt and immediately starting to roll her shoulder, hoping to alleviate some of the stiffness that had come into it. "Damn," she grunted, kneading at the aching muscle and stinging scrapes.

"You okay?" Octavia asked in worry, limping over to her friend.

"Hit a rock in the river yesterday," she answered, shaking out her arm. "Just a bit stiff from climbing."

"You're pretty good for someone who's never seen a tree," the brunette teased. Cyra scoffed and shook her head before guiding Octavia over to where the others were working with the vines, wrapping them thoroughly. "Who's going over first as the test run?" Octavia asked as soon as they approached, as blunt as ever.

"I'll do it," Finn volunteered.

"If you fall in, hit it with a rock," Cyra offered as advice, causing him to laugh as he gave the vines they'd rigged up a firm tug. Clarke gave her a bizarre look, thinking that she was being sarcastic. "What, that's what I did."

Monty and Jasper rounded on her. "You…hit it with a rock?" Jasper repeated, unable to wrap his mind around it. "How big was the rock?"

Before Cyra could answer, Clarke interrupted them to get them back on track. "We need as much daylight as we can get, so we need to get over the river, now."

Cyra and Octavia shared a look of annoyance. "Sure thing, Princess," Finn answered, slipping passed everyone with the twined vines in his hands. Jasper went with him, the entire thing having been his idea, while the others all clustered on the rocks at the shoreline. Cyra continually glanced over her shoulder, paranoid about having her back to the snake that had almost taken off Octavia's leg and her face.

At the last minute as Finn was drawing back to swing, Jasper stopped him and they discretely traded places. Cyra glanced over to where Octavia was watching with a smile and scoffed a laugh. Well, at least it was a step up from giving her a flower. "Remember, Jasper, a rock," she called up, seeing him offer a tense smile. Probably shouldn't be teasing the poor guy, but she was sure that it would be okay in the long run.

They were on a higher ledge than the rest of them, so the height difference should allow him to swing safely across the river, provided he holds on long enough and the vines down snap. But there're plenty of them there, so she's confident they'll do fine.

Finally, Jasper pushed off. He glided over the water in one quick swing, taking seconds but feeling like it was forever before he swung over onto dry land again, tumbling down and hitting the cluster of sticks on the back with a surprised yelp. However, he was on land. The vine rope swung back at them, Finn catching it before it flew over the water again, as they all rushed to the edge, trying to see if he'd landed alright.

Dusting himself off, Jasper leapt up onto his feet.

"We are Apogee!" he cheered, throwing his arms into the air as the rest of them broke into cheers from their side of the river, clapping and applauding Jasper. Jasper was jumping and celebrating on the other side, causing them to laugh in relief. That was one hurdle dodged.

"Way to go Jasper!" Clare shouted, laughing along with the rest of them as they watched Jasper's excited nature come to the forefront. After what happened the day before, they'd all been a bit nervous and cautious, but to make such a big leap into progress made things better.

"Let's go, Princess. You're up," Finn commented as he led Clarke toward the hill that Jasper had taken off from, Octavia and Cyra continuing to keep an eye on Jasper as he inspected the area around them. He could see Clarke take the vines, next to dare the swing over the river.

"Come on, Clarke, you got this! Apogee!"

Cyra shook her head in amusement before glancing down at Octavia. "Ready to brave the open air?" she teased, causing the shorter of the two to scoff and push her with a shoulder. "Let's hope the snake can't jump."

"Are you trying to scare me?" Octavia finally demanded, even though she was grinning at the woman's constant jests. It was more than she'd ever heard Cyra speak before, so she wasn't about to tell the woman to stop.

"We did it!" Jasper called over from the other side of the river. "Mouth Weather!" He was holding a decayed and rusted metal sign over his head, but it clearly had Mount Weather printed at the top in faded black lettering, letting them know that they were most definitely heading in the right direction. Monty cheered along with Jasper, causing Cyra to break out in a smile once more.

She could get use to this freedom.

As suddenly as the happiness had come, it was ripped away as a spear flew through the air with deadly accuracy, striking Jasper in the chest and throwing him back into the trees. Cyra's heart felt like it dropped completely from her chest, hitting the cold stone she was standing on. That spear had come from their side of the river, somewhere in the trees. Clarke was calling to Jasper, desperately trying to see if the teenager was alright. Cyra and Monty crowded the other two over to the treeline, behind the rocks that they had been standing on.

"Get down, Clarke," Cyra ordered when the blonde kept trying to get a look at their fallen friend. "That spike came from behind us," she snapped, pushing her down again as she fell in a hunch behind them. Now still and as quiet as their heaving breaths could get, they could hear movement in the trees they had been standing in front before.

"We're not alone," Clarke finally voiced, speaking what each of them were thinking.

"We've got to move," Cyra began, keeping her voice low. "We're in the open here."

"She's right, into the trees," Finn encouraged, grabbing a hold of Clarke and Monty while Cyra took Octavia, throwing her arm over her shoulder so she could take her weight off of her injured leg. The adrenaline seemed to help, because she was able to manage most on her own, keeping up with everyone as they rushed into the trees and tried to get as deep as possible.

Clarke kept trying to stop, looking back as though expecting to still be able to see Jasper after the distance they had run.

"Keep up!" Cyra ordered, starting to get winded from half dragging Octavia through the uneven terrain provided by the roots and fallen trees. Finn stayed close, making sure that Clarke didn't get left behind while Monty took the lead; glancing back to make sure that everyone was following. One of those glanced was enough to trip him, making him miss a root he should have jumped over. He hit the ground hard, but didn't immediately get up as his attention locked onto the skeleton that lay inches from his face.

"Monty!" Octavia gasped out as she reached down to help him up, Cyra letting her go as she numbly looked around the clearing they had entered.

"It's a graveyard," Cyra gasped out, her chest still heaving for air even as her body suddenly seemed to lose feeling.

"Who are they?" Finn asked as he pulled Monty away from the dead person that he had been lying near.

" _What_  are they?" Clarke corrected, showing them one of the skulls that littered the ground. It almost looked like that of an ape, but it was similar to a human's as well. Cyra began counting the bodies that lay around and realized that graveyard wasn't far off. This must have been where dead bodies were dumped, instead of getting buried like the people of the past that they'd read about.

"We are so screwed," Octavia forced out, feeling sick.

No one else got a word out before an anguished scream cut through the air, echoing through the trees and making it that much harder to listen to. "Jasper's alive," Cyra snapped before she and Clarke took off running back toward the river.

"The spear must have missed his heart!" Clarke commented as she kept pace behind her. Finn caught up to them before they got to the river, stopping them from emerging through the trees and putting themselves in the open. They could still see where Jasper had once laid, now vacant of their friend's body. "They took him," Clarke mumbled, glancing to the older woman standing beside her, her jaw locked tight with tension.

"We have to go back to the drop site," she answered. "We can get him back, but we need more people. And Octavia can't keep running around with that leg."

"I'm fine!" the brunette protested, but Clarke agreed with Cyra. They had to return to camp and possibly round up a couple of more people to help track down and save Jasper from whoever had taken him. "Come on, before they come back with more weapons."

Reluctantly, they left the river behind and turned their backs on Jasper, knowing that he was alive. The only thing they could hope for was that he survived long enough for them to bring help.


	5. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

They were getting close to the drop site, but Cyra could see that all of the walking was beginning to takes its toll on Octavia. She was limping more prominently and stumbling over everything. "Wait," she called to the others, stopping Octavia when she tried to strive on with sheer determination alone. "Hop on," she encouraged, crouching on front of the other woman. Octavia looked like she wanted to protest, but stopped herself before even a word came out and reluctantly climbed onto her friend's back. Cyra stood up and took a moment to right her hold on Octavia, gentle with her injured leg, before continuing on and catching up with the others.

"Thanks," Octavia mumbled against Cyra's shoulder, watching the others as they walked a couple of yards ahead.

"It's alright, you're light," she answered easily, hoping that she didn't sound like she was straining to carry her friend. She didn't exactly work her arms while in prison so she was weaker than she'd like to admit, but she didn't want Octavia to keep going when her leg was already in bad condition.

"No I'm not," Octavia huffed, knowing that Cyra was just being kind. It made the taller woman laugh but she didn't say more as she dredged her way up the hill that Finn was just disappearing over, keeping pace with Clarke. "Not very patient, are they?"

"Just worried about Jasper," Cyra argued, not wanting Octavia to get angry at Clarke or Finn. She could understand their desire to get back to the drop site as soon as possible. "I'm sure you're worried about him, too."

"Yeah," Octavia agreed, letting her chin drop to rest on Cyra's shoulder. It wasn't as boney as she had been expecting, but it was solid with lack of fat. "Hey…will you tell me why you were in solitary?" she asked hesitantly after a brief pause between them. When Cyra didn't answer her she almost wondered if she hadn't heard her, but looking to the woman's face—or at least what she could see of it—Octavia could tell her jaw was tense as she clenched her teeth. "I understand if you don't want to."

"It's not something I want people to know," she admitted. "I…did something really bad, and I deserved to be locked up for it, but it's more complicated than the black and white that the council seems to see. I'm sure you of all people understand that the best."

Sighing loudly, Octavia nodded against the thin shoulder she rested on. "You got that right."

They continued on in silence for a couple of more minutes before Octavia spoke up again.

"If you ever want to talk about it, just know that I will never judge you. I'll listen, if you need it."

Craning her neck to look down at Octavia, the brunette was pleased to see she was smiling at her gratefully. "Thanks, Octavia. I don't remember the last time someone said they'd be there for me." Smiling in assurance, Octavia wrapped her arms around Cyra's neck in the form of a hug, her head leaning against the soft hair at the back of the older woman's head.

Thankfully, the site of the dropship came into view short minutes later. Clarke and Finn rushed ahead while Monty stayed with Cyra and Octavia, knowing that there was a fairly steep hill down to the site and Cyra was looking rather tired. "You want me to take her?" Monty offered, but she shook her head and carefully stepped over a log to get down the hill of crumbling, loose dirt.

"Octavia!" Bellamy shouted as soon as he spotted his sister being carried. Cyra turned her body to give him access, knowing that he'd went to take his sister from her, and let him help Octavia step down onto her own feet again. "Are you alright?" he asked immediately, looking her over but unable to find what the problem was.

"Yea, I'm fine."

"What happened?" he asked, hoping it was something simple, like a sprained ankle.

"A snake," Cyra answered for her, rolling at her stiff shoulders.

Bellamy looked up at her, looking like he was ready to call her out on it. "It was," Octavia butted in, seeing the defensive look on her brother's face. "It was a giant snake that got me when we reached the river."

"Where's the food?" he asked, looking from her over to Clarke.

"We didn't make it to Mount Weather," Finn answered instead, taking a seat to rest for a second.

"What the hell happened out there?" he demanded finally, his patience gone. The last thing he needed to see was his sister returned injured, and in the hold of a woman that he did not know, nor trust. Glancing around at all of those who had returned, including his sister, his answer came from Clarke.

"We were attacked," she blurted out, finding no other way to explain it.

Cyra copied Finn and dropped to sit down, opting for just dirt instead of trying to find a log. "Attacked?" Wells demanded. "By what?"

"Not what," Cyra corrected, dusting off her hands when the dirt she sat on stuck to her palms.

"Who," Finn added on. "Turns out when the last man from the ground died on the Ark, he wasn't the last grounder." The survivors that had been drawn forward from the commotion of a fight and then their return shuffled anxiously, not sure how to take the news of other people on Earth.

"It's true, everything we learned about the ground was wrong. There are people here, survivors. The good news is, we can survive; radiation won't kill us." The assurance was small, but it was the main concern that had led to them being dumped on the ground anyway. People were whispering all around, looking to their friends with concern mirroring on everyone's faces.

"The bad news is the grounders will," Finn finished, his voice low but audible to everyone that was straining to hear.

"Where's the kid with the goggles?" Wells suddenly asked, taking a count of those who had returned.

"Jasper," Cyra began, wiping at her face tiredly, "Was hit with a spear across the river, at the base of Mount Weather. They took him somewhere." Octavia looked down at her friend, sharing in her pain and fear. They had no clue what they had been stepping into when volunteering to go out for supplies. This would have been the last on their list.

Clarke took notice of the metal band lacking from Wells wrist before anything further could be said about Jasper. "Where is your wristband?" she demanded, snatching his wrist for a better look. At the mention of it, Cyra looked down at her own wrist, displeased at the presence of the metal that encased the joint.

"Ask him," Wells answered as he nodded over to Bellamy.

"How many?" Clarke asked after only a brief pause, turning her attention fully onto Bellamy.

"Twenty four, and counting," Murphy answered for him, having been the one to take most of the bands off anyway. Rising to her feet, Cyra dusted off her butt so that it wasn't covered in dirt.

"Twenty five, I could do without it," she started, tugging up the sleeve of her sweater to reveal the metal band, looking overly large on her thin joint. Clarke marched over to her and shoved down on her arm, preventing her from offering it to Murphy.

"You idiots!" she snapped. "Life support on the Ark is failing! That's why they brought us down here! They need to know that the Earth is survivable again and we need their help against whoever is out there," she explained, looking out over the sea of prisoners from the Ark. "If you take off your wristbands, you're not just killing them, you're killing us!"

"They already tried to kill us," Cyra grumbled out, hitting Clarke's hand away from her person. Turning to face her, she straightened up to her imposing five-seven height. She may have been thin, but she still looked terrifying when she stood directly in front of you, glaring down. "Or have you forgotten the fact that we're Guinea Pigs for a liveable Earth? They sent us down here with a 50/50 chance of survival—if the crash didn't kill us, the radiation still could. We survived the crash, we'll survive the remaining radiation, and we can survive the grounders."

Octavia almost shivered at the venom in her friend's tone, having never heard her sound so absolutely enraged before. Whatever the Ark and its people had done to her left a permanent scar on her heart that she was not willing to overlook. Beside her, Bellamy looked at the woman with a curious expression, wondering just what the Chancellor had done to her.

"We're stronger than you think," he called out to Clarke. "Don't listen to her," Bellamy continued for Cyra, motioning over to Clarke as he spoke to the surrounding kids. "She's one of the privileged; if they come down, she'll have it good. How many of you can say the same?" Speaking up to the people standing on the hill, they muttered their agreements with Bellamy. "We can take care of ourselves! That wristband on your arm, it makes you a prisoner. We are  _not_  prisoners anymore!"

Cyra watched Bellamy pace, listened to the deep timber in his voice as he spoke out over the remaining one hundred. Glancing at Clarke out of the corner of her eye, she could see the anger and worry in her eyes as she listened to Bellamy and the agreement that he was being met with.

It was time for the Princess to step from her pedestal.

"They say they'll forgive your crimes, I say you're not criminals! You're fighters, survivors. The grounders should worry about  _us_!" The crowding adolescents gave a great cheer of agreement, throwing their arms up as they shouted.

To punctuate his point, Bellamy marched over to Cyra and took her wrist under his arm, anchored against his side. Clarke could only stand by, watching, as he slipped the makeshift blade that he'd made into the crack of the band's lock. The survivors cheered him on as he twisted the blade, digging it deeper and separated the ends of the band. Cyra's face contorted for a moment as the prongs in her flesh pulled and shifted, and then they were gone. The band's lock broke open and it fell to the dirt floor with a dull clatter.

Her wrist was warm in Bellamy's hand, her skin a milky white with irritation showing around the veins from the prongs that had read her vitals. The Ark would never see her again. Releasing her arm from beneath his, he stroked his thumb over the slightly bleeding wounds as he turned to face her. She was stronger than he'd thought, he would admit. She'd seemed so small and frail, but he'd been wrong about people before.

Still holding her wrist, Bellamy leaned into her. "You don't look under the age of majority," he whispered, his hot breath ghosting her face.

Cyra did the same, leaning forward. "Neither do you," she retorted smartly before pulling her hand free and stepping back, a grin tipping up the corner of her mouth. Bellamy realized belatedly that she was teasing him and found himself laughing as she turned away from him and made her way deeper into the camp that had slowly been forming while they were gone.

Octavia was leaning on her good leg as she watched her bother, who had watched Cyra walk until she disappeared into the dropship. Cocking an eyebrow as he turned to look back at her, Bellamy's grin disappeared at the look on his sister's face. "What?"

"Don't go chasing my only friend, Bell. She's been locked up for four years."

Huffing a laugh as he slipped her arm over his shoulder, he began helping her over to a place she could sit down. "Seems she can take care of herself. Let's get that leg taken care of."

Cyra had barely gotten into the dropship when someone was blocking her path, preventing her from entering further. "Wells," she greeted coolly, wondering what he was going to do now that he had a chance to confront her. The kid didn't exactly look like he was afraid of her, or threatened by her. "What can I do for you?"

"I know why you were locked up," he began. "So I know what everyone will think of you. Step out of line, and I'll make sure all of the one hundred know about your secret." Even though he was threatening her, Cyra couldn't help but to snort a laugh as she tilted her head to one side. She'd forgotten about how ballsy some people were after spending so much time alone.

"You think I'm worried about that? There are dozens of people here who've done worse than me, and they're welcomed in just fine."

"They aren't over the age of majority," he snapped back.

"So?" Cyra demanded, starting to get annoyed. " _Your_  father ruled that I stay in, that I'm not killed needlessly. You know so much about me, what I did? You should know why I wasn't floated at eighteen," she growled at him. "Did you know it was a majority vote? Only one of the council members voted to float me."

Wells just shook his head, watching her with a careful eye. "It doesn't excuse what you did."

Taking a step back, Cyra opened her arms as though to invite him to try something against her. "I will  _never_  ask forgiveness."

Wells held her steady stare for a moment before he turned his back on her, having said what he wanted. Cyra watched him scale the ladder to the upper decks, looking for Clarke. Letting out a long sigh as soon as he was out of view, her hands lifted to run through her hair tiredly. She had not wanted to confront the kid about anything, and then he goes and tries to blackmail her.

"You're over eighteen?"

Cyra's head snapped up as she looked over to who had spoken, not having realized someone else was inside the ship. Monty was standing near a cluster of seats, blending in with the dark and making it near impossible to see him without focusing. "Damn," she muttered, arms dropping back to her sides limply.

"Hold old are you?" he asked as he stepped forward, keeping his voice low. He didn't really have anything against her, and he was hoping that he could keep her as a friend. She liked Jasper, and she wanted to help save him.

"Almost twenty," she answered grudgingly. Monty's eyes widened as he opened his mouth, ready to speak, but snapped it shut again when nothing came out. He sputtered for a moment before collecting himself again, hearing Wells and Clarke coming from the upper level.

Taking a deep breath, Monty nodded. "Something worse, huh?" he asked, repeating what she had said to Jasper when he'd asked what she'd done. Cyra smiled sadly as she nodded her head. "You've been good to us, and you want to help save my friend. I won't tell anyone," he assured quietly, seeing the relief flood Cyra's face as she nodded her thanks to him, smiling genuinely this time.

"Thank you, Monty."

Clarke and Wells were arguing about Wells coming along on their way down the ladder, drawing her and Monty apart as they turned to watch them approach. Clarke hit the ground first, turning to look over at them as Wells tried to prove that he could come along.

"Clarke, he's right we need him. So far, no one else has volunteered," Monty explained, glancing briefly over to Cyra. She hadn't outright volunteered, but everyone knew that she could want to go anyway.

"I'm sorry, Monty, but you're not going either," Clarke declined. Monty immediately stepped forward, fighting against Clarke's decision. Jasper was his best friend, it made sense that he would want to go on a rescue mission after him. "You're too important. You were raised on farm station and recruited by engineering."

"So?"

"So? Food and communication," Clarke elaborated. "What's up here," she started, tapping the side of Monty's head. "It's gunna save us all." He didn't look entirely pleased about, but Monty could understand Clarke's logic. Nodding his head silently, Monty gave in as Clarke turned her attention over to Cyra. "You good?" she asked the older woman, still somewhat shaken about her after what happened when they returned to camp.

"Awesome," Cyra answered blandly, staring over Clarke's shoulder to where Finn was entering through the makeshift entrance flap, basically just the parachute draped over the entrance. Clark turned to look at what had caught her attention, relieved to see someone that she actually could stand to be around at the moment.

"Hey, you ready?" she asked quickly, wanting to get on the move.

However, Finn shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere, and neither should any of you. That spear was thrown with pinpoint accuracy from three hundred feet-"

"So what?" Monty interrupted. "We leave Jasper dying?"

"That's not gunna happen," Clarke interrupted. Cyra reached over to rest a hand on Monty's shoulder, knowing that he was already worried about his friend as it was. Finn's argument to keep them back wasn't helping matters. He glanced back at her, swallowing thickly as he thought about his friend's fate.

"We'll bring him back, Monty. We don't need Finn to do that," she assured, getting a twitch of a smile as he nodded his head in gratitude. "We all want to say that we're not kids anymore," she continued, speaking up to interrupt Clarke and Finn's debate. "This is real life, and we can't hide behind 'it's too dangerous' anymore. We're in a new world and we have to play by its rules. But that doesn't mean we give up. If we don't go back for Jasper, we're showing the grounders that we're weak. I, for one, refuse to give them that advantage."

Stepping passed Clarke and lifting the parachute flap, Cyra glanced back at the blonde. Clarke nodded her head, agreeing, and stepped through the opening that Cyra created. Wells approached more cautiously, but she didn't wait for him and let the opening close behind her as she walked out after Clarke. Finn glanced at Wells, wondering what that was about, but he didn't give any inclination as to why Cyra ignored him.

"We can't take Octavia, her leg's bad," Cyra began saying to Clarke as they looked around the camp. "Who else could we use?"

"Bellamy," she answered, spotting where he was with his sister, tending to her injured leg. Nodding in agreement, Cyra approached first as Clarke followed a bit more reluctantly. Bellamy was certainly not her favourite person at the moment, then again neither was Cyra. The taller of the two stepped up to the siblings, getting a smile from Octavia.

"How's the leg?" she asked in greeting, stopping beside Bellamy to take a look at the wound. It wasn't as raw as it had been the day before, and thankfully the bleeding hadn't resumed after they ran from the river.

It was Bellamy who answered, wringing a rag over the wound, washing away the old blood. "She could have been killed."

"She would have been, if Jasper hadn't jumped in to save her," Clarke snapped at him, while Cyra's back straightened in surprise. Octavia smothered a laugh as she waved at the blonde, reminding her that without jumping into the water there probably wouldn't have been anything left of Octavia to save. She didn't say this aloud, of course, since Bellamy was already getting threateningly protective over his baby sister.

"Are you guys leaving?" Octavia asked, retying the strip of material that slowed blood flow to her wound. "I'm coming, too!"

"No, no way," Bellamy denied immediately, putting a hand on her shoulder to stop her from trying to get up. "Not again."

"He's right, you're leg's pretty bad. You need to rest it," Cyra agreed, getting something akin to a pout from the younger girl as Bellamy stood up beside her, glancing over to her when she spoke up. "We're actually here for you, Bellamy."

"What?" Wells demanded from behind Clarke.

"I hear you have a gun?" Clarke posed, waiting for his answer. Instead of offering a verbal response, he lifted the side of his shirt to show where the weapon was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Cyra recognized it as one that the guards carried on the Ark. Looking up from where he'd stashed it, her eyes met with his as he tried to gauge her reaction to see it. He was struck for a moment by her eyes, bright blue and green, surrounded by such pale skin. Her eyelashes were long and dark, not a trace of makeup having touched her skin for years and leaving it clean and blemish free.

"Follow me," Clarke ordered suddenly, moving to leave as Bellamy dropped his shirt back down to cover the gun.

"And why would I do that?" Bellamy asked as he glanced over to Clarke, taking his attention away from the woman beside him.

Clarke kept her voice low as she spoke to Bellamy, keeping the conversation discrete. "Because you want them to follow you, and right now they're thinking only one of us is scared."

It seemed to do the trick, as Bellamy began to shrug his jacket back on, directing orders to certain people. Cyra crouched down beside Octavia as the others finished the last second preparations to leave. "You be careful," Octavia warned, getting a nod of assurance from her friend. "Bring Jasper back, please. He helped saved me and I can't even return the favour."

"He'd understand," Cyra assured, patting Octavia's good leg as she straightened up and give the brunette a tight hug. "Stay out of trouble while I'm gone. No more swimming." Octavia laughed against her friend's shoulder before the two separated.

Keeping her voice low, Octavia glanced to Bellamy as she spoke, "Keep an eye on Bell, would you? I don't want anything to happen to him."

"Sure thing," Cyra agreed, glancing to the elder sibling as he approached them with Murphy as his flank.

"Atom!" Bellamy called, drawing in another guy that had been nearby. "You make sure that my sister doesn't leave this camp, is that clear?" Octavia immediately protested and Cyra wisely stepped back, not wanting to get in the way of the siblings. She'd had enough family drama of her own growing up; she didn't want to have to deal with that of other families as well.

Instead, she approached Clarke and a nervous looking Wells.


	6. Cracked, but Not Broken

Cyra stayed ahead of the others as they were walking, even Clarke, who had Wells as her permanent shadow. She didn't want to have to deal with the looks he was constantly giving her, and his vibe seemed to be making Clarke just as jumpy because she was treating the woman like a rabid animal. It made her wonder if Wells had told Clarke what he knew, but she had doubts that he would just blurt something like that out.

He'd rather keep it as leverage.

She was a couple of yards ahead when she heard Wells and Murphy getting into it. Again. Sighing loudly and turning back, Cyra returned to where they had clumped themselves together in a small clearing of trees. "Brave Princess," Bellamy was saying as she approached, her eyes flicking over his shoulder to the form approaching from the dropsite.

"Hey, why don't you find your own nickname?" Finn asked, announcing his presence. "Call this a rescue party? You gotta split up, cover more ground. Clarke, you're with me."

Thankfully, that got the ball rolling a bit more effectively. Cyra stepped aside to let Finn pass, glad that someone was finally getting something done instead of just jumping at someone else's throat. It seemed that all the guys had done since they left the camp was threaten one another or get into arguments. Taking the area to the left, away from where the guys were on the right, Cyra kept to herself for most of the walk.

The air was thick with humidity from the rain that had fallen a short while before, drips continuing to fall from the trees above them. She found herself missing the undershirt that she'd sacrificed for Octavia's leg, having nothing else but her long sleeved sweater that felt much too thick. The only thing that was a reprieve was that lack of band around her wrist.

Glancing down at the small red dots that were left behind, Cyra remember the feeling of Bellamy's rough thumb as it stroked over the wounds, removing the blood from her skin. It was the softest touch she'd received from someone since she was a child. The only person who'd ever treated her as anything other than a criminal was Doctor Griffin, Clarke's mother, when she'd been treating her many injuries upon her imprisonment.

The thought of her scars made her back itch, but she fought against the urge to touch them.

Rolling the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows, Cyra stepped over a fallen log that was covered heavily in moss. Her boot slipped slightly from the moisture of the rain clinging to the greenery, but she caught herself before she actually tumbled forward.

"Careful, don't need to carry you the rest of the way."

Glancing over her shoulder, Cyra raised her eyebrow at Murphy. "I'd deserve the punishment of limping if I was stupid enough to slip on moss," she joked, getting a smirk of amusement from the guy as he hopped over the log to join her. She glanced briefly to the others, seeing that Wells and Bellamy were talking a couple of yards to her right and Clarke was still with Finn up ahead.

"Was that other kid really speared?" Murphy asked as he fell in step behind Cyra. Knowing that someone she wasn't comfortable with was so close to her, behind her and out of her immediate view, made her skin crawl.

"Yea, he'd crossed the river first and someone threw a spear from behind us. We ran," she explained. It made her mouth feel dry and her tongue too thick. She didn't like admitting that they'd just left him there, but they'd thought that he was dead when they'd run away from him. Only when he screamed did they realize that he was alive and they had just left him behind like bait. "You don't really care about Jasper, do you?"

"Didn't know the kid," Murphy answered her honestly. She could at least respect that he hadn't tried to make up a lie. "If he is still alive we could always use more man power. If these grounders really are a problem, we could use him."

Cyra bit her tongue, wanting to lash out at him for what he'd said about someone she considered a friend. Ducking under another tree, Murphy was persistent enough to keep trying to follow after her. She was able to keep her pace through the forest pretty easily, having the experience of the hike from the day before, while Murphy was more on the clumsy side. She would have laughed if she didn't know that he'd probably take it personally and get pissed off at her for it.

The sound of rushing water drew Cyra into a faster pace, heading in the direction that Finn and Clarke had disappeared a couple of minutes prior. "Hey, what's the rush?" Murphy demanded in surprise, trying to keep up as she started to jog away from him. Even from a distance, she could see the waterfall that was creating the loud sound of rushing water, helping to break up the humidity slightly.

Cresting over the hill, she spotted Finn and Clarke on the opposite side of the water, near the base of the falls. "Clarke!" she called as she began to descend toward the water, hopping over the rocks as she approached. Her heard sank in her chest as she spotted the rocks behind them, sprayed with a large amount of blood. Clarke was holding the goggles that Jasper had always worn on his head.

"We're close," Finn said as she approached, Murphy stumbling up behind her.

"Go for a swim?" she asked, taking a look at the two before her, each soaked through completely.

Finn turned to her after washing blood off of his fingers, realizing that she was standing on the shallower rocks that led into the deeper waters. She didn't even register the mischievous glint in his eyes until his palm pushed against her chest, throwing her back at the suddenness of it and drawing a startled scream from her lungs. The water was cold as she hit the surface, reminding her of the day before when she'd jumped in to help save Octavia.

Water rushed into her mouth from having it open, leaving a strange taste on her tongue as she kicked back up to the surface, tall enough that she could stand with the water up to her shoulders. Coughing the water out of her mouth, Cyra shook her head to remove the hair from her face, water dripping into her eyes. Glaring up at Finn, he had a triumphant look on his face as she dredged her way back to the shallower waters.

"Finn, this is no time to joke around!" Clarke scolded, moving over with Murphy to help the older woman out of the water.

"What are you guys doing?" Wells called as he and Bellamy caught up with the rest of them, watching as Murphy helped pull Cyra out from the deeper pool of water. "This isn't time to be swimming."

"Finn pushed me in, you jackass," Cyra snapped at him, tired of having him blame her for things. Murphy snorted a laugh, releasing Cyra's arm as she tried to squeeze some of the water from her clothes. As refreshing as it was after hiking for hours, she did not want to walk around the rest of the day with wet clothes.

Cyra trudged through the water to get to the dry rocks, wringing her shirt as best she could. The material was now sticking to her like a second skin, making her defined shoulders and waist stand out through the clothes that usually hid them away.

Bellamy and Murphy both failed with being discrete as their eyes travelled from her shoulders down, taking in the pale flesh of her chest that was exposed when the shirt was weighed down. Clarke glared at her briefly, feeling awkward to be surrounding by guys that were staring at Cyra so openly. However, she realized that the older woman had no intention of seduction, not like Octavia the day before. "Jasper was here," Clarke explained to Bellamy and Wells, holding up his goggles. "This much blood means that he was alive when he was here."

"That much blood might mean he's dead," Bellamy answered as he glanced passed her to the red rocks, taking in the large stains of red that still looked fresh.

"You don't know that," Clarke snapped back, refusing to give up until they found Jasper, dead or alive.

Cyra wrung her shirt one more time before she reluctantly gave up on it, still heavy with water but a bit more bearable. She only wished she could do the same with her pants. "We should get moving if we want to find him before that happens," Cyra called over to them, motioning to the stones she was standing on to reveal another spattering of blood that had been left behind. "They went this way."

Finn took over the lead, having the most tracking experience. They continued to follow the stream of water that lead from the waterfall, thinning out the further they want. For the most part, they were just following Finn, but every once and a while they could see the small flecks of blood that he was tracking more easily than them. "Hey, how do we know this is the right way?" Murphy finally voiced.

"We don't," Bellamy answered. "Spacewalker thinks he's a tracker."

"It's called 'cutting sign'. Fourth-Year Earth Skills. He's good," Wells explained, glancing over to where Finn was drawn toward the forest side of the path they were on, spotting a branch that had been broken by someone recently.

"You wanna keep it down, or should I paint a target on your back?" Finn asked, crouching in front of the bush to inspect the rocks beneath. Just like many times before, there was a trail of blood that was easily missed is he hadn't been acutely looking for it. Cyra stepped up beside where Clarke and Finn were kneeling, scowling at the sight of the blood. Jasper would be almost dead at the rate they were going; so far the easier thing to track had been the constant drips of blood.

"He won't last long if he keeps bleeding like this," Cyra mumbled, hearing Clarke sigh heavily in concern. She was right.

Through the trees, a faint groaning sound reached them from the distance. They all heard it, looking in the direction the sound had come from. "What the hell was that?" Murphy demanded, looking to the others in hopes that one of them would know.

"Someone in pain," Cyra answered, stepping away from Clarke and Finn to begin in the direction of the sound.

"Now would be a good time to take out that gun," Clarke told Bellamy as she fell in step behind the other woman, following the sound of painful groans. Cyra wasn't keeping slow anymore; she didn't need to trail behind Finn as he searched for signs of where Jasper had gone. They knew where he was now, and the fact that he was making noise told them that he was still alive. The sounds was getting louder as Cyra ducked through a tight cluster of trees, coming out into a clearing with Finn close behind.

In the center of a clearing was a large, dying tree. Jasper was strung up in the center of it, half way up the trunk.

"Jasper," Clarke gasped out at the sight of him, the others rushing in behind her.

"He was tortured," Cyra mumbled, taking a couple of steps closer as she tried to get a better look. "There're new wounds on his stomach and sides. Someone's been cutting him up…" she trailed off as Clarke darted passed her with Bellamy and Finn close behind her. She stepped forward more slowly, trying to gauge why Jasper had been strung up in such a way.

"What the hell is this?" Bellamy demanded in shock, just as disturbed at the sight as everyone else.

"Bait…" Cyra mumbled suddenly, causing Murphy to look to her in surprise. "He's bait. Clarke, stop!" she shouted a moment too late. Clarke stepped onto one of the traps that had been prepared around Jasper, breaking through the fake ground toward a pit. Bellamy had been standing close enough behind her that he was able to grab her arm before she went down, left to be impaled on the spikes located at the bottom.

"Clarke!" Wells shouted, rushing to help.

The others had pulled Clarke up from the hole before Cyra even reached them, having been at the back of the group.

"You okay?" Finn asked once Clarke was out of the pit, shaking and panting in fear as she stared down at the spikes that had almost killed her.

"You knew that trap was there," Murphy said suddenly, drawing attention to where Cyra was moving aside some dried grass, revealing another trap a foot away from where Clarke had fallen through. "How?" he demanded.

"The blood," Cyra answered calmly, looking up at Jasper again. "Hunters used to do that when they were setting traps for certain animals, meat eaters. They cut him up with fresh wounds so that something would be drawn in with the scent of blood; keeping him alive means that he'll continue to bleed. If he's dead nothing would come for him. These traps would catch something before they reached him."

"Were they set for us?" Finn asked in concern, standing close to Clarke.

"I don't think so; the trail they left wasn't intentional. And this was here long before we arrived. It's something that's been done before," she answered with a shake of her head, using her foot to reveal another trap. They circled all the way around the tree, stopping whatever would have come for Jasper no matter what direction it arrived from.

Clarke adjusted the strap of her bag nervously. "We have to get him down."

"I'll climb up there, cut the vines," Finn volunteered, beginning to make his way between the traps that Cyra had already uncovered, walking with careful steps toward the tree. Wells volunteered to help as well, but Finn ordered him to stay with Clarke, calling Murphy over instead. "Cyra, keep an eye out for anymore traps. You seem to know the signs."

"There's a poultice on his wound," Clarke said, glancing over to Cyra. "You were right, they deliberately kept him alive."

"Keep a sharp eye," Cyra called to everyone. "Whatever they were trying to catch could still show up." As the words left her lips there was a low, distant rumbling from somewhere in the trees around them. Everyone went still, turning to the direction of the sound. "I hate being right," she mumbled after hearing it, turning her back on the others to look around into the trees. Murphy panicked a moment as he stopped cutting at the vines around Jasper's waist, looking around quickly for what had caused the noise.

"Keep cutting," Clarke ordered.

"What the hell was that?" Murphy demanded.

"Grounders?" Bellamy suggested, but even he sounded unsure.

"Not unless they growl," Cyra countered, beginning to search around for a weapon. One of the traps that Clarke hadn't broken had sticks overlying the top, thin enough to break under someone's weight, but thick enough that she was sure it would hurt to swing at whatever was making that noise. Pulling one of the sticks free, which was as tall as her, Cyra turned back toward the forest as the sound of movement reached her ears.

Turning toward the growling, the woman looked up in time to see the large black animal that slinked into the sunlight, hunched down to the ground as it stalked them. Clenching the stick in her hands, she suddenly wished she had grabbed something a lot stronger.

"Bellamy, gun!" Clarke shouted as the black cat charged through the bushes and underbrush, heading straight for them.

Cyra could hear the gunshots as they started to go off, but they were coming from the wrong direction. Looking briefly to her right, she felt her heart drop at the sight of Wells holding the gun instead of Bellamy. When had he gotten that? Turning her focus over to the other man, he was left unprotected as the black cat disappeared in the surrounding bushes, hiding itself from them with only the rustling leaves to reveal where it was.

"Bellamy, behind the traps!" Cyra shouted. If they were meant to catch the beast, maybe they could keep them from getting eaten.

After she had given her demand, though, the growling and moving stopped, leaving the area silent. Making her way in Bellamy's direction slowly, since Wells was protecting Clarke with the gun, Cyra held her breath to listen carefully for even the slightest sound of movement in the brush. Bellamy turned to look at her as she approached, but she was still watching the bushes carefully.

The black cat sprang from the underbrush just in front of Bellamy, still a couple of paces away from Cyra, at the same time that Wells shot the last bullet in the gun. Cyra screamed in pain as the metal grazed her upper arm before it imbedded in the cat's side, bringing it down for good this time. Dropping the stick that she had been holding, Cyra quickly covered the graze in her arm as her jaw locked in pain.

Looking over to the other two, Clarke was standing behind Wells, wide eyes with fear as she looked down at where the large cat had gone down in front of Bellamy. Wells dropped the now useless gun, seeming shocked at his own actions as he looked between the dead beast and the blood that was seeping through Cyra's fingers.

"Now she sees you," Bellamy told Wells before he approached Cyra, removing her hand from her arm as she hissed in pain.

"Bind her wound," Clarke told him, reaching into Wells's bag and ripping off a piece of the parachute he'd brought. "Tie it tight, stop the bleeding. I'll take care of it when we get back." Bellamy took the offered strip of cloth and lifted Cyra's arm, watching her face contort in pain as he tied it over the injury, pulling tight on the knot to slow circulation around the injury.

"Kid's got terrible aim," she grunted as he tightened the strip, causing him to chuckle under his breath while looked up to her pained eyes. Now that the sun was out, the colours looked so clear.

"Were you trying to protect me?" Bellamy asked, thinking back to her as she had approached him before. She'd looked like she was ready to strike at the cat if it lunged but she'd closed the distance between them as though she would do it for him.

"Yea," she answered, looking down to watch as Bellamy tied the loose ends of the cloth around the rest of her arm. "I promised your sister." Looking up into her mismatched eyes, Bellamy was surprised to see the genuine concern and determination that sparked behind the blues and greens. For someone who had been locked away for so long, she didn't seem to need much time to get her fighting spirit back.

Or perhaps she'd never lost it in the first place.


	7. Remain in Obscurity

Octavia wandered through the clusters of people that had spread out around the darkened camp, the only light provided by the main fire that they had lit near the center to cook the meat the others had brought back with them. Presently, she was in search of her friend who had disappeared almost as soon as they'd gotten back. She hadn't seen her get anything to eat and when she'd asked Bellamy, he'd confirmed that she hadn't come to the fire to collect one of the pieces, even though she had no wristband and had earned it.

"Hey," she called after spotting Murphy and Bellamy standing near the dropship. "Have you seen Cyra?"

"Not since you last asked us," Murphy snapped back, but Bellamy gave him a warning look before tipping his head in dismissal. Murphy left with an annoyed sigh, heading over to the fire pits to make sure they were burning okay.

"She's a big girl, Octavia. I'm sure she's fine; probably just found somewhere to sleep for the night," Bellamy assured. However, he, too, was wondering where the woman had gone. He hadn't gotten a chance to speak with her since they'd freed Jasper to carry him and then large cat back. That also meant that Clarke hadn't looked at her arm since they'd gotten back, meaning that the quick patchwork he had gone was all that she had to cover the bullet graze.

"She hasn't eaten, Bell. And you said she was shot!"

"Grazed," he corrected. "The bullet only grazed her." Octavia made a face of annoyance, causing her brother to let out a long sigh. "Alright, I'll help you look for her. Let's check the perimeter, okay?" She smiled her gratitude and followed her brother out, momentarily forgetting that Atom had disappeared with him short minutes before when he'd found them kissing in the woods.

Tucked behind a clustering of trees that crested the top of one of the hills surrounding the dropsite, Cyra was curled up with her arms crossed across her chest. Her bicep throbbed faintly from the graze that she'd been ignoring, deciding that she'd be fine until the morning when she could actually see what she was doing. Clarke had been busy taking care of Jasper since they'd gotten back, so she hadn't even bothered asking the blonde for her help.

Shuffling a bit, she sighed softly as she turned her head to the side, resting it back against the tree. She hadn't realized how tired she was until she'd actually sat down, intending to sit for a bit while the hype over the food faded. She'd ended up dozing for an hour and ended up completely forgetting about getting anything to eat. The silence from the main camp told her that the food was probably all gone already—her stomach immediately protested this thought. However, there was nothing more she could do so she just shifted to get comfortable and decided that she'd get some extra sleep to make up for the lack of food.

"There you are." Almost groaning at the sound of Clarke's voice, Cyra opened her eyes to see the blonde standing beside her tree with one of the lamps from the dropship in her hand. She had a wet cloth and clean rags in the other. "I wanted to take care of your arm, but I couldn't find you. Octavia's been looking for you, too."

"Been sleeping," she answered after a moment before sitting up and leaning back against the tree. Clark knelt down beside her as she draped the make-shift bandages over her thigh and handed the wet cloth over to Cyra to hold.

"You'll have to take your shirt off," Clarke said after she began to untie the messy knot that Bellamy had tied in the strip of parachute from earlier. It was saturated with blood, but it seemed that the actual wound had stopped bleeding some ago. Once the knots were undone she leant back to let Cyra tug her sweater over her head, thankfully dry after hiking in the sun and wind all day. Angling herself to block her back from Clarke's sight at the same time that she offered her injured arm, Cyra watched the blonde's expression carefully.

She forced herself to remain silent as the wet cloth was wrung out over the injury, washing some of the blood away before Clarke began to dab gently at the rest.

"It's not deep, but you'll need to keep it clean and covered until it scabs over," Clarke explained as she was working, being as gentle as possible. Holding Cyra's arm as she worked revealed that the woman really was malnourished, her bone easily found by prodding fingers, the only protection supplied by stretches of muscle, not an ounce of fat.

The way that Cyra had positioned herself wasn't missed by Clarke's watchful eye, her attention momentarily distracted as she tried to get another look at the scars on her back. "Looking for something?" Cyra snapped angrily when she noticed Clarke's wandering attentions, causing the younger to jump in surprise. She gapped for a moment, trying to find something to say before she just closed her mouth and resumed her work.

Her mother usually told her about the patients that she cared for, but Clarke couldn't remember hearing about anyone that had wounds like Cyra's. She had seen enough of her mother's work to recognize her clean stitch patterns. "I saw them when you gave me your shirt," she finally said, her voice wavering just slightly as she switched from the wet rag to begin wrapping Cyra's arm. "Back at the river. My mom stitched you up, didn't she?"

Cyra stared down at Clarke with a critical eye. She would admit that she was surprised that the first questioned out of her mouth wasn't 'what happened?' but she knew that would come in time. "Yea, a couple of years back."

"Do they have anything to do with why you were in solitary?" Clarke continued, tying the cloth tight over Cyra's bicep.

"No," Cyra answered coldly, the one word answer blunt and screaming of annoyance. The present topic of discussion was  _not_ something she liked.

"I find that hard to believe," Clarke muttered under her breath.

Suddenly, Cyra's arm was ripped from her grasp. Looking up, the older woman was staring down at her in absolute outrage, making her usual calm appearance ugly with anger. "I don't give a single, solitary  _fuck_  about what you  _do_  or  _do not_  believe," she hissed out, leaning forward to stare directly into Clarke's eyes through the darkness. "Not all scars are punishment for doing something bad. Sometimes all it takes it being born."

Grabbing her sweater from the ground, Cyra turned to leave while pulling the material violently over her head, ignoring the burning in her arm as the wound was pulled and irritated.

"Why do you hate me?" Clarke snapped back at her, rising to feet as well.

Cyra turned back so fast, Clarke was surprise she didn't slip in the loose dirt. "You're a spoiled brat that thinks every word you speak, every thought you have, is law. You're going to learn the hard way that things are  _very_  different from the life you had on the Ark. What would have been the 'right thing to do' in the past, could get someone killed now." Staring each other down, the two girls didn't back off until movement behind Cyra drew their attention to the newcomers.

Seeing the expression on Octavia's face was all Cyra needed to know that she had heard everything she and Clarke had been talking about. Bellamy was only a pace behind her, his expression somber as his eyes fixed on her with a deeper understanding.

She couldn't take their pity. It felt like someone was stabbing a burning knife through her stomach. Gritting her teeth, Cyra turned away from all of them and made her way deeper into the woods, away from the three of them. "Cyra!" Octavia called softly, stepping after her with the intent to follow.

"Wait, Octavia," Bellamy quickly stopped her from going after the older woman. "She probably just needs some time to be alone."

"That's the problem!" Octavia snapped, swatting her brother's hands off of her person. "She's only ever been alone! For whatever reason, before she was in Solitary she didn't have any family. She's  _always_  been alone!"

Of course, Octavia was right. She's had people that she loved after being hidden under the floor for so long, but Cyra hadn't even had that—she went from one hell-hole to the next. "Alright, I'll go get her. You stay here. I don't want you wandering around in the dark." She looked like she wanted to protest, but Bellamy turned her around and nudged her back to the camp. "Go! I'll bring her back."

Reluctantly, Octavia did as she was told and made her way back toward the fire pit. Bellamy looked over to where Clarke reminded standing, staring down at the ground after being scolded by Cyra. She didn't even look ashamed or sheepish to have someone point out her flaws. She looked angry, like she wanted to deny that any of them were true.

"Nice going, Princess," Bellamy complimented sarcastically.

Cyra was angry—she was angry at Clarke and she was furious with herself. She slipped up and let her anger at the other woman make her speak up, and end up voicing things that she did not want to ever speak about. Cursing herself under her breath as she plowed her way through the woods, Cyra began fumbling with her sweater, trying to make sure that it wasn't inside out and she hadn't put it on backwards.

She wasn't able to get much further before a hand caught her arm and drew her to a stop, causing her to spin around with the intent to shout at whoever it was that had followed her. That seemed to be common knowledge when a hand landed over her mouth, preventing her from expressing her anger.

"Probably shouldn't give the Grounders better knowledge about where we are," Bellamy warned before removing his hand from Cyra's mouth, feeling her beginning to quake in his hold. Clearly, she did not like being silenced in such a way. He had a feeling that she'd been quiet for most of her life and was now so far past annoyed she would never allow it to happen again.

"Go away," she hissed at him instead, wrenching her arm from his hold.

"Can't do that," Bellamy denied. "Now you've got my sister all worried and I can't have her running out here to find you herself."

"Then go keep an eye on her," she snapped back at him, dodging around a tree and disappearing from view for a moment. When she went to walk passed another, Bellamy had already predicted her plan and stepped out from around the tree, cutting her off and causing her to bump into him suddenly. "Fuck off!

"Hey, be nice," he ordered mockingly.

"I am being nice," she retorted, stepping back from him to put space between them. "Nice is me not slapping you for following me. The others might let you lead them, but I'm no one's bitch."

"I can believe that," Bellamy agreed. She had helped them and followed along during the trip to Mount Weather and Jasper's rescue, but she went at her own discretion. She refused to let anyone think that they were controlling her, guiding her. After being repressed on the Ark for so many years, she was rebelling in the only way that made her feel better. Feel free.

Cyra realized that she wasn't about to get rid of him and fell to lean back against the tree that he had blocked her from passing.

"At least you put the Princess in her place. Someone had to say it eventually," Bellamy commented after a moment, looking through the lingering darkness to where Cyra was slouched down. She gave off a scoffing laugh, turning her head away from him even though he couldn't see her expression through the dark anyway. "Not that I don't agree with it, but what set you off?"

She didn't answer him verbally, but when she turned her head back to him and stared without a comment he realized she was probably glaring at him for bringing it up.

Holding his hands up in surrender, Bellamy couldn't help but to smirk wryly in amusement. "Alright, never mind."

Pushing away from the tree, Cyra pulled her sweater sleeves lower to cover her hands, tucking them into her pants once her posture was straight once more. "Come on, apparently it's easier to ignore you back at camp."

Bellamy gasped in mock pain as his hand flew to his chest. "That hurt, babe."

" _Don't_  call me babe," she snapped back so quickly that Bellamy almost recoiled at the harshness of her tone. However, he smartly held his tongue and followed after the woman silently. That was a very volatile reaction for such a simple world; it was an immediate reaction, too. At some point in her life she had been called babe by someone else and it caused her to instantly lash out against it.

He watched her tense shoulders, the paleness of her neck and shoulders visible through the darkness. If she hadn't been wearing the dark grey material she's probably have been completely visible in the darkness, even the tiniest wisp of moonlight causing her pale skin to glow like metal reflecting light back on the Ark.

Octavia was still sitting near the fire when they entered the camp again, but Cyra marched straight passed to get to the dropship instead. The brunette watched her, standing up and appearing like she wanted to call out to her. Bellamy frowned, watching Cyra completely ignore the woman that she had nearly died saving. She was lashing out and pushing people away. Whatever caused Clarke to get chewed out had clearly thrown her into a rage if she was angered with anyone and everyone.

Thinking of the princess drew his attention over to where Clarke was lingering near one of the smaller fire pits, her eyes following after Cyra as well. There was something akin to remorse in her eyes.

Humming in thought, Bellamy knew that this wasn't something that he'd be able to just forget. Whatever had happened had caught his attention.

Cyra headed to the top floor of the dropship, scaling the ladder a bit slowly because of the wound on her arm, to meet up with Monty and an unconscious Jasper. He was groaning in his sleep, in pain from the infection that had set in around his wound. "Hey," she greeted in a tired voice, shuffling over to kneel next to Monty. The Asian looked up to her with an expression to match her tone.

"Hey," he returned, keeping his voice low as though he didn't want to disturb what rest Jasper could get. It wasn't as though he was afraid of waking him up, though. Jasper was in the closest thing someone could get to being in a coma.

"How's he doing?" she asked pointlessly, already able to see that his condition had worsened quite a bit since they'd all gotten back.

"His fever's gotten worse," Monty answered in a rough voice. Cyra reached over to grasp his shoulder, wishing that there was something more she could do to comfort him. "Clarke's done all she can for him right now. We don't have the resources down here to save him."

"You were raised around healing plants," Cyra pointed out blandly. "We're surrounding by the source of plant life. Earth. There's got to be  _something_."

"Clarke's been trying to figure out what was on the poultice that the Grounder's had put on his wound, but she's never seen it before. Neither have I. We don't have anything like that on the Ark," Monty explained, reaching up to wipe at his face in his fatigue. Cyra exhaled heavily beside him, shifting to fall on her butt as she looked down Jasper's sweaty face. She liked the kid; didn't want him to die in such a painful, violent way.

"I don't know about healing plants, I'm useless with this stuff."

Monty turned to her with a tight smile, knowing that she was doing all she could and hated that she couldn't do more. "Do you mind if is ask…what you did? I mean before you were in prison, not what you did to get in!" he corrected quickly, seeing the tenseness of her jaw at his initial question. Once he'd corrected himself, Cyra relaxed.

"My father didn't want me getting a job on the Ark; he said that it was a woman's place to stay back and keep out of the way, birth a kid and that's it. He even intended to pick whose kid I'd be having." Monty's face contorted in disgust at the thought of a father doing such a thing, but didn't make a verbal comment. "But I did odd jobs for people of the lower class. Messenger, clean-up, delivery girl; anything to make myself some money."

"What'd you use the money for?" he asked with curiosity bleeding into his tone.

"Never got the chance to," she admitted with a sigh. "I'd been stashing it away, saving it up, but I was arrested before I could use it."

Monty nodded his head, but he was staring down at the metal floor beside Jasper's head. That topic again—her lockup. Whatever she'd done had Wells on her back and it was eating away at Monty to figure out what it was. Cyra wasn't a fool, either; she knew that it was constantly going through his head since he'd found out. But she wasn't ready for someone else to know just yet. She didn't know Monty well enough to gauge whether or not he'd freak out on her for knowing.

"No matter what I did," she finally mumbled, "I'm not a bad person. I…I don't want to be a bad person."

Finally looked up from the floor, Monty turned to Cyra with a solid, determined look. "What you did doesn't matter. You helped save my best friend. That's more than most here have done."


	8. Survival of the Fittest

Cyra fell asleep stretched out on her back, one arm tucked beneath her head to cushion it from the hard metal floor of the dropship. She woke up in the exact same position when Jasper almost shouted in his sleep, still unresponsive but clearly making his pain known. She could barely tell from near the ladder that it was daylight outside, but that didn't mean it was a time anyone wanted to be awake. The sounds of complaints from other survivors could already be heard and Cyra let out a long sigh, realizing that there was bound to be a lot of cranky people out today.

Letting out her own dull groan, Cyra pulled herself up into a sitting position, her back cracking loudly in the process, to look around. Monty was working on the wristband near one of the lanterns still, but he was constantly looking over to his friend. If she was to guess, Cyra would say that he had been awake all night, either taking care of Jasper or trying to contact the Ark.

"Hey," she greeted, her voice rough with sleep.

Monty looked over to her at the sound of her voice, finally noticing that she'd woken up. "Morning," he answered tiredly, taking one more quick glance at Jasper before he returned his attentions to the wristband in his hands. "You sleep like a log, you know that? I don't think you so much as twitched last night."

"I learned not to be noticeable a long time ago," Cyra explained in a bland voice before she hauled herself up from the floor, moving to crouch beside Jasper. He was paler than the night before and a touch to his cheeks and forehead confirmed that his fever had continued to rise. "Has Clarke been by to see him?"

"Yea, she went to wash the rags she's been using for him," Monty mumbled, his entire posture tense and on edge. The lack of sleep wasn't going to help his concern for Jasper, and it would make him fidgety and on edge. "Wells and Finn have been in and out, too. The way Wells looked at you made me worry he was going to suffocate you in your sleep." She was sure it had been meant as a joke, but it made Cyra's skin crawl none the less.

"Chancellors do what they must," she sneered. Monty realized belatedly that she wasn't just mocking Wells and his father; she was repeating the words from someone else's lips. Probably the Chancellor's. Rising back to her full, imposing height, Cyra made her way toward the ladder to head out into the morning light. She hadn't eaten the night before and her stomach was starting to protest so many days in a row without anything to eat. The meals in solitary might have been few and far between, but she was starting to push it now.

The light that assaulted her eyes right outside of the ship made her close her eyes a moment, hoping to adjust to the light. The sun hadn't cusped over the trees yet, but the light still penetrated through the trees and brightened the sky into a vibrant blue. Blinking tiredly as she looked around the camp, most people were stirring with the morning chill as some of the deeper sleepers slumbered on. Even from outside the dropship, Jasper's groans of pain penetrated the silence.

Even only standing outside for a few moments, Cyra could feel that it was going to be a warmer day than the one prior. There was a thick humidity in the air and several people were already shucking off their over-shirts or jackets in favour of thinner shirts beneath. Tugging subconsciously on the sleeve of her shoulder, Cyra felt the faint pull on her arm wound but didn't even bother to glance down at it. She hadn't had a problem with it after going to bed the night before, so she wasn't worried about it bleeding through the rag that Clarke had wrapped it in.

"Hey."

Octavia approached the side of the ramp with a slight limp to her step, her leg still tender from the day at the river. Cyra looked at her hesitantly, not sure how to respond to the younger woman after how she had acted the night before. "Sorry about ignoring you," she finally settled with saying as she crouched at the edge of the ramp, still higher than the brunette in front of her. "I don't like dredging up my past."

"Believe me, I understand," Octavia assured with a timid smile. "Sorry to send Bell after you like that, though. You didn't look happy with him."

"Your brother can be overbearing at times," Cyra answered with a deadpan stare, only causing Octavia to laugh as she once more nodded in agreement. She knew all about that, especially since he was always so protective of her even when she didn't want him to be. The way he had treated Atom was a testament to that.

Heaving a loud sigh as she turned her attention out into the camp, she looked up in time to see Bellamy slip from him appointed tent, pulling his dark blue shirt over his head. Octavia noticed as well and glanced up to Cyra again, seeing the faint signs of a scowl that had set across the woman's face. "Have you even eaten the past couple of days? You missed all the meat last night."

"I'll go find something today. Plants or something," Cyra answered, shuffling off the ramp and hopping down beside Octavia. "I'd say fish, but I'm paranoid of rivers now."

Octavia let out a snort of a laugh, shaking her head at the other woman as they made their way to the edge of the campsite. "You should have eaten last night while you had the chance. Who knows when we'll get more meat."

"Barely ate as it was, I'll live."

Octavia glanced to her friend out of the corner of her eye, wondering briefly if Cyra meant in Solitary or even before that. "Okay, just be careful."

"Yes mum," Cyra teased back as she scaled the small hill around the campsite and disappeared into the woods. She didn't even know what she was looking for, but she hoped that something jumped out at her instead of allowing her to completely overlook it. She lifted her hands and splayed her fingers, palms facing toward the ground, Cyra frowned at the tremors that ran through her hands and caused them to shake uncontrollably. She'd be no good if she didn't eat something.

Using her feet, she moved aside plants and leaves, trying to see if anything within bushes or small trees were edible-berries or nuts, maybe even roots or fungus on the tree bases. Plucking off leaves, she scented the bright green foliage, thriving at the clean smell that her senses took in. It took her a little while more of walking, but she soon came along a small marshy area that had clusters of large, leafy weeds.

Cyra knew that her Earth Skills were poor from the very beginning, especially after seeing how proficient Finn was in that area, but she definitely recognized the Plantain weed as soon as she spotted it. The leaves were large and thick and entirely edible—if someone could get passed the bitter taste. She'd remembered reading about them because they were not only edible, but incredibly healthy, containing a lot of vitamins that people needed to survive.

"Guess I'll have to fill up on rabbit food," Cyra mumbled to herself as she crouched in front of one of the plants, the leaves around the outside already about six inches long while the ones closer to the center were still small and growing.

The area was scattered with the plants, big and small, so Cyra just started to pick. She dusted them off as well as she could, making sure any bugs or dirt weren't carried off with the leaves. Since she'd never had to live off of these things before, she had no clue how many she would need to eat before she had enough to somewhat fill herself. So, she just took two large handfuls and followed along the marsh's stream to find a bigger supply of water.

Thankfully, she'd been heading in the right direction and was soon sitting on a flat stone next to a decent sized stream that looking clean enough to wash off the leaves that she was intending to eat. Folding one of the smaller ones to eat in one bite, Cyra cringed at the bitter taste but forced the paste down after she'd chewed it a minute to soften up. Thankfully, the taste wasn't as bad as she'd been expecting, better than what she'd eaten in Solitary, but that didn't make it any easier on her tongue.

However, as bitter as they were, she ate every single leaf and her stomach stopped hurting almost immediately after the last leaf was gone. She'd have to remember how to get to the marsh if ever she needed some last minute food. It would be better than having to fight the other survivors for rations. If they ever got any.

By the time she got back to the drop-site, everyone was awake.

"Hey, Cyra!" a younger girl called over, surprising the woman enough to flinch. How'd she even know her name? Wandering her way over to her, she noticed that they were trying to move more of the trees that they'd been knocking down for the past day toward the edge of the camp. "Could you help us get these over there? We're trying to set up an entrance."

"Like a gate," the guy next to her elaborated. There were five trunks from younger trees, as thick as her thigh, but only three people that were assigned to work on the entrance.

"How'll they stay up?" Cyra asked as she looked in the direction that the girl had pointed for the gate.

"Brandon's dug some holes for the two main posts, these two," the guy across from her answered as he motioned down to the two thickest logs. "We'll pack them in and strap the others to them. Dig support holes every couple of feet."

"Good idea," Cyra complimented before she bent and picked up one of the larger logs, slinging it onto her shoulder before she rose up again. It was a bit heavy, but since it was a thin tree it wasn't too bad. "Hand me a smaller one, too, and you guys grab the others."

The girl looked mildly surprised at Cyra's sudden move, but quickly jumped forward to grab a thinner log and prop that on Cyra's shoulder as well, giving the woman a moment to adjust to the two eight foot logs before she carefully made her way through the camp. People moved out of the way without her having to comment, realizing that it was either move or get hit with one of the trunks. It seemed that Cyra had eaten just in time, since she spent the next couple of hours helping those three—Brandon, Sasha and Matt—build the gate.

"Matt, let Cyra get that!" Sasha was almost yelling at her friend as he tried to stretch up to tie some of the logs together at the top, giving them better support.

"She's right. Give it up, man, she's taller than you," Brandon snickered next to Cyra. He was the same height as her, which he drudgingly admitted, but he knew that he wasn't very tall for a guy as it was. Shaking her head in amusement, the woman in question just watched from the sidelines as Matt determinedly stretched up on the balls of his feet, almost toppling over in his struggles.

"You're gunna break the wall, leaning on it like that," she taunted after a moment, getting a snort from Brandon while Matt glared at her over his shoulder. "It's not supported yet and you're leaning your full weight on it," she explained, pointing over to where the logs had yet to be tied to the post that they'd buried in the ground, a couple of feet away from the one that made up the gate.

Matt sniffed sheepishly as he adjusted his weight away from the wall. "Shut up," he muttered a second later. Sasha and Cyra shared a look of amusement before Clarke wandered over to them, interrupting the peace that they'd had while working for the past couple of hours. The three with Cyra glared at her as she approached, but the woman that Clarke was coming to see just looked at her with minor annoyance.

"What is it?" she asked before Clarke could offer some false greeting.

"Do you want me to look at your arm?" the blonde asked as soon as she was close, barely sparing a glance at the three behind Cyra.

"No," was the simple answer, no elaboration or explanation offered as Cyra continued to stare down at Clarke, waiting for her to leave. It seemed like Clarke wanted to press further, but Matt took that moment to finish tying the posts.

"Alright, let's move on to the next section. Cyra, wanna go grab those other logs for us?" he asked loudly, deliberately interrupting anything that could have come from Clarke's mouth. Cyra almost sighed in relief and turned on heel, starting off in the direction of the growing pile near the center of the camp. As people were clearing away trees and debris, they'd been piling up the trees that were good enough to be used for the wall in one place. Brandon followed after her, lending a hand. They'd been building up sections with five logs per, allowing them to strap the five together while lying them on the ground, place a sixth log into one of the holes, before they strapped the panel they'd made up between the two support posts.

It was a pretty efficient system, one that the other people working on the wall had adopted from them.

"What happened to your arm?" he asked while they were picking out their next logs, checking to make sure they were all long and sturdy enough.

"Wells grazed it with a bullet when we went to get Jasper from the Grounders," she explained, glancing down at her upper arm. Her sleeves had been rolled to her elbow, but there was a bump beneath the material that showed where she'd redone the bandage herself a couple of hours before.

"Fuckin' idiot," Brandon swore, which caused Cyra to smirk at him before they each took an end of the cluster of logs they'd picked, carrying them back to their little work station. "I thought Bellamy was the one with the gun?"

"Wells took it when Bellamy was stopping Clarke from getting herself killed."

"Surrounded by idiots, huh?" Brandon teased as Cyra glanced over her shoulder at him briefly before returning her attention to the path in front of her. The last thing she needed was to trip while in the middle of camp. She'd been drawing attention since that morning, when she'd carted two logs off by herself without much effort. People seemed to look at her and think 'stick thin' which also meant 'weak'.

Just because she didn't have a lot of fat on her didn't mean she didn't have muscle.

As they were working to tie the rest of the logs together, Sasha stopped them with a hand grabbing Cyra's injured arm. It had been throbbing a bit from moving around so much, but it wasn't causing her too much outward pain. "You're bleeding!" Sasha gasped out, looking at the small patch of blood on Cyra's shirt, the red mark steadily spreading.

"Shit," Cyra cursed under her breath, rolling her sleep up as fast as she could to get a better look at the bandage beneath. It was soaked through above the wound, causing it to leak into her shirt. She'd have to wash her shirt in hopes of removing the worst of the bloodstain. And soon, otherwise it would be a lost cause.

"Do you want me to get Clarke?" the younger girl asked, knowing that even if nobody liked her, the blonde was the only one medically inclined.

But Cyra shook her head, rolling her sleeve tight above the injury to keep the material away from the blood. "I can take care of it," she assured. "You guys good without me for a bit?"

"We got it from here," Matt answered, clapping her on the back as he moved to take her place, offering his aid to Brandon—she jerked in surprise at the contact but remained silent. Nodding her thanks, Cyra moved away from the camp in the direction that she had gone that morning, hoping to get to the stream before her shirt was ruined more than it already was. It may have been littered with holes, but she'd been pretty good to keep it from staining.

As she slipped through the trees, Bellamy dismissed himself from the small gathering of survivors to follow after her discretely. He made sure to keep back from her so as not to warn her that he was behind her; she was focusing on where she was going, however, which made him wonder how she knew where she was going in the first place. Was this where she disappeared to that morning? He'd kept an eye on her after he'd noticed her helping with building the wall—it was a surprise to see her so much calmer than she had been the night before, her attitude much improved from snapping at people or ignoring them.

She made her way around a marsh of muddy ground, tipping Bellamy to realize that she must have found water nearby. As he was making his way around the marsh behind her he made the mistake of walking passed a dying bush, his leg brushing the dried branches and causing a series of small snapping sounds to draw her attention.

Cyra turned around just shy of Bellamy ducking out of her view, her green and blue eyes scanning the area critically. She stayed that way for a minute, examining for even the faintest sign of someone following her, but when there was no further movement she turned back toward the stream, her attention a bit more focused than before.

Her senses remained acute as she reached the rocks that surrounding the low stream, the water deep enough that she was sure she could wash the sleeve of her shirt without it upsetting the mud on the bottom. Kneeling at the edge of the water, Cyra untied the make-shift bandage around her arm and peeled it away, inspecting the bleeding wound that had been hidden beneath. Frowning at the amount of blood that had come out, she wondered briefly how she hadn't realized it was bleeding sooner.

Using a clean piece of the bandage, she dabbed at the wound to remove as much of the fresh blood as she could before carefully manoeuvring her arm out of the sleeve, pulling her shirt up over her shoulder in the process. She'd have to strip off the entire thing to clean it properly. She may as well do the bandage while she was at it. Pulling the long-sleeved shirt over her head, Cyra rolled her shoulder and glanced back down at the graze when the movement seemed to stir more blood to the surface, causing it to drip down her arm.

Lifting the shirt up to inspect the material of the sleeve, the woman could at least say that she'd successfully been able to stop any other blood from getting on it when pulling it off. Slipping her hand into the sleeve, she leant forward to dip that section of the sleeve into the water, holding the rest of the material to keep it out of the water. The day may have been warmer than the others so far but as soon as she lost the only covering she had over her bra she felt the chill—mostly because she was in a section of the forest that had heavy clusters of trees to block the sun.

A few yards behind her, Bellamy was leaning against one of those trees with his hand covering his mouth to keep his breathing quiet. At first he'd felt some kind of secret satisfaction to see that she wasn't wearing something beneath her shirt, letting him see the span of pale skin that was pulled over her thin torso.

Until her shoulders were completely visible.

The criss-cross of scars was something that he'd seen on people before, but these were all years old in the same degree of recovery. Whoever had done that to her must have gone off in a series of sharp strikes—there were over a dozen of the pink scars spanning from shoulder to shoulder.

Silently, he pushed away from the tree and approached the kneeling woman.


	9. Secure Embrace

Cyra had pulled her shirt from the water, inspecting the stain, when she noticed a blurry reflection in the water, taking a faint outline of a person. Jerking away from where she'd been kneeling, she had nowhere else to go but to step out into the water in a panic, spinning around to who had been behind her, eyes wide with surprise.

"Bellamy?" she demanded in shock, annoyance and anger lacing her voice. However, the anger bled away when she noticed the look on his face, something that looked a mix of sadness and pity expressed on his features. It only took her another second to realize that, having been standing behind her, he would have seen her scars.

Taking another step back, out of the stream and onto the shore across from Bellamy, Cyra clutched at the shirt in her hands, tendons standing out in her arms at the tension.

The only person that had seen her scars on the Ark had been Dr. Griffin, and now Clarke and Bellamy had both seen them in less than two days. "Stop looking at me like that," she finally snapped at him, hating the pity in his eyes. She didn't want pity, sympathy or anything that would cause someone to think of her as weak. She wasn't weak, but whenever someone saw her back that's what they'd think.

"Who did that to you?" Bellamy asked instead, remaining calm as he watched her posture tense up. Facing him head on revealed that there was one other scar that could be easily missed if someone wasn't looking for it. The raised pink skin was just above the hem of her sports bra, leading from her arm toward the center of her chest on her right breast.

"Stop!" Cyra shouted so suddenly that Bellamy put his hands up as though to ward off her anger. "Stop—Stop looking and staring! Just stop it!"

"Okay, okay," Bellamy agreed, turning his head to the side to stare upstream instead. Until he heard running. Looking up again, Cyra had disappeared through the trees, taking off away from him at breakneck speed. "Wait!" Leaping over the small stream, Bellamy took off after her, trying to keep up with her thin form dodging through the trees like a ghost. "Cyra! Come on, stop!"

Just as he had done the last time he'd been forced to chase her down through the forest, Bellamy dodged around in hopes of cutting her off. It was surprising how quick she was, he hadn't been expecting it. However, she was running in one straight line, so it was easy to get around her once he got a bit of an advance on her. Cutting into her path, Cyra didn't even cry out when Bellamy caught her with an arm around her waist, almost taking her feet off the ground from her own momentum.

"Let me go!" she finally shouted, trying to throw her weight around enough to get him to release her. When he didn't unwrap his arm from her—instead using the other to secure her torso against his—Cyra lost it. Her breathing picked up to the point that he was mildly worried she'd pass out from hyperventilating, her entire body quaking in what he could only assume was fear.

She was having a panic attack.

"Cyra, it's okay. I'm not gunna hurt you," Bellamy tried to assure, to calm her down, but Cyra was still trying to use her feet to either push against him or away from him, digging her heels into the soft dirt beneath them. "Cyra, please, stop!" She either realized that he wasn't going to hurt her or she wasn't getting away from him, because her struggles gradually ceased until she was only leaning against him. Bellamy took her weight and gently eased her down with him, sitting on the forest floor as she continued to tremble lightly.

As tall as she was, he realized that she was still incredibly thin and light.

Her back against him, Bellamy almost had her sitting in his lap as she struggled to take in proper breaths. Her skin was beginning to feel cool to the touch, her shirt dropped back on the stones near the creek, with a cold sheen of sweat glistening on her pale skin. "Don't look at them," she rasped out a moment later, looking down at the mossy ground they sat upon.

"I won't," Bellamy promised, continuing to just hold her as she slowly calmed, taking in deeper breaths and relaxing her agonizingly tense posture. "You're okay, Cyra. You're just fine."

"No," she denies in a tired tone. "I'm not."

Holding onto her a bit tighter, Bellamy resisted the urge to look down at her scars. They were so close. He could have counted each of them—instead, he forced himself to look closely at her hair, taking in the blends of blonde and brunette strands—she must have been born blonde, but the strands darkened from time in solitary. "You will be," he tried instead, squeezing her arm to offer what comfort he could. However, doing that brought him to realize that both her arm and his palm were moist with warm blood. The wound there was bleeding heavily, her heightened heartrate causing it to increase the blood flow.

Instead of staying anything, he shifted his hand to press over the wound in hopes of stopping the bleeding. She didn't flinch in pain, even though he was fully aware that she'd feel it, but just continued to stare at the ground. He didn't know what else he could do—he'd never had someone have a panic attack on him before. However, he did raise his younger sister and knew that someone who was afraid, or sick, or upset recovered best when there was someone that they knew was there.

Soon her shivering died down, more caused by the chill in the air than her fear, and he only held onto her more securely in hopes of keeping her warm. He was surprised when she slowly leaned back into him, resting against his chest without even realizing it as she calmed down.

They had been sitting in silence for a while before she spoke suddenly, startling Bellamy from the abruptness of it. "It was my dad."

Swallowing thickly, Bellamy stopped himself from speaking and let her continue on her own.

"He wanted to sell me for sex. I fought off the guards, stopped them from doing anything, and my dad beat me into a hospital bed." Her voice was bland, monotone, but he couldn't blame her for wanting to detach herself emotionally from the situation. He'd tried to do the same whenever the guards came to visit his mother—otherwise his rage would have had him beating someone into a hospital bed.

The breath that Bellamy released quivered against her neck, his attention wavering down to her shoulders against his will. "Did they float him for it?"

There was a momentary pause as Cyra lifted her head, staring forward into the green forest. "He's dead," she answered without the least bit of remorse in her voice. Then her eyes slowly directed over to her arm, where his hand was resting over her steadily bleeding bullet graze. "You're getting covered in blood."

"Yea, and you're losing a lot of blood," he returned. "Let's get you back to the creek." Lifting her carefully as his arms constricted tightly around her—thankfully, she didn't panic this time—Bellamy soon had her standing on her own feet.

"Please let me go," she asked in a meek voice after they were both on their feet. Of course, Bellamy didn't want to overstep his bounds again and released her reluctantly. She was standing stiff again, but it seemed that it was more from discomfort. "No one else knows," she finally mumbled out. "Not even Octavia."

"I won't say a word," he promised without having to get any further prompt from her.

Usually, he'd have used this against her. It's what he would have done in the past—something he would have to do in order to survive on the Ark. But with her…he didn't want to betray this secret, especially because it made him think of his mother, harassed by the guards more times that he was willing to remember.

Cyra took over holding her wound, slowing the blood flow. Thankfully, her heartrate had calmed down as well and therefore she wasn't going to be bleeding as heavily. Bellamy kept an eye on her, though, walking a couple of paces behind her as they started back in the direction of the creek. It was a silent walk that felt as though it was going to go on forever—he hadn't thought they'd gotten this far away from the river. At least Cyra's panicked running left them a clean trail in the dirt to follow.

However, they soon reached the last clustering of bushes before the creek. Cyra shouldered her way through them, wincing at the prickling feeling of the trees pricking her skin. Glancing along the rocks on the shoreline, she stopped in her tracks when she came up empty with her search. Spinning in a circle, thinking that maybe she'd dropped it somewhere further than remembered, proved just as futile as the first check.

"What's wrong?" Bellamy asked as he emerged from the bushes as well, brushing the leaves from his shirt as he looked at the confused Cyra.

"My shirt's gone," Cyra answered in a low murmur. Frowning as well, Bellamy began to glance around their feet. He distinctly remember her dropping the wet material on the rocks—he'd had to step over it to follow her—and yet there were only traces of water splashed up from the creek to show for it. "Maybe I—"

"No, I saw you drop it here," Bellamy confirmed. He knew that she'd be second guessing herself, he probably would as well if he hadn't been certain. "Maybe an animal took it, smelled the blood?"

Cyra sighed in answer as she nodded along. It made sense, but that didn't exactly help her. "Great, now I've got to worry about things stealing my clothes?" she grumbled to herself before hopping over to the other side of the creek, snatching up the bandages that had—thankfully—been left where she'd laid them to clean later.

Rinsing the bandages of blood quickly, she didn't have time to wait for them to dry. So, she simply wrung them out as best she could before beginning to loop them around her arm. Bellamy silently moved forward to help, noticing her muscles flinch when he was close. Thinking back on it now, she'd never really let someone else touch her before. He'd seen her and Octavia close, but whenever it came to being in a group or around untrusted people, she always seemed to push herself away from them, stand off to the side or in the back.

Tying her arm tightly, Bellamy looked up to her face. She was watching his hands, her mismatched eyes staring at him critically. "I've got an extra shirt in my tent," he began as he took a step back. In the next moment, he'd lifted his shirt up and stripped it off of his torso, leaving it bare. "Here, people probably won't notice if you're wearing my shirt for now. Better not to have you walk into camp half-naked."

"Thanks," she accepted the shirt with whispered gratitude, taking the still warm material in her hands. She had never worn someone else's clothes before, so it was strange when she pulled the shirt up over her head and took in the strong smell of Bellamy's natural body odor and nature from spending time on the ground. It was warm with a foreign body's heat and larger than the clothes she'd had for the past couple of years. His bulkier frame left the shirt draping over her boney figure like a blanket.

"Come on, let's see if we can sneak back into camp without too many people's crazy assumptions," he proposed, motioning for her to head out in front of him. She knew better how to get back anyway. "How'd you know this place was here?" Bellamy called up to her as they left the stream behind. "We've been looking for a water source recently."

"Found it this morning," she answered back with a glance at him over her shoulder. "Looking for something to eat."

"You didn't get anything last night," Bellamy remembered, muttering more to himself than anyone else. "I'm sorry, should've gotten you some when we went back to camp."

"I wouldn't have eaten it—I was pissed off at you, would've refused out of spite."

"Sounds like you've done it before," he probed cautiously, hoping that he wasn't treading into territory that would cause another breakdown.

"When I was first put into lockup, I refused anything and everything. Water, food, a shower. The guards hated me. It was actually Clarke's mother, Dr. Griffin, who finally got me to do something. She just wiped the grime off my face with a cloth and gave me a glass of tea while she checked on my back for infection. It was…different. Kind of woke me up. I realized that rebelling like that wasn't doing anything but making me sick, hungry and smell terrible."

"You'd have been…what? Fourteen?" Bellamy asked.

"Just about," she answered, but in truth she'd been nearly sixteen at the time. She didn't want Bellamy to know about her surviving her trial. His mother was floated only because of having a second child—she couldn't stand to have him hate her because she was alive for doing a crime much worse. "I couldn't do anything else, so in a way it made me feel like I was taking my life back into my own hands. Didn't really work."

"Your life is yours now," Bellamy encouraged. His words caused Cyra to slow to a stop, glancing back at him with a new interest in her eyes. "I spent my whole life taking care of Octavia, trying to keep her safe and hidden. But it was because of me that she was found out. There was a masquerade and she wanted to go out and see the Ark  _so_  badly. So I took her to the party. And the guards came in, asking for everyone's identification."

"She didn't have one," Cyra mumbled to herself, taking in Bellamy's tortured expression.

"I tried everything to get her out, I bribed every guard I could, but they'd never do it. My mother was floated for having a second child and I was kicked off the force and demoted to janitor. I want the lives that Octavia and I always dreamed about—and we're here, on Earth. Doing things of our own free will, and not having to hide anymore."

"Not having to hide," Cyra repeated as her hand lifted to touch her shoulder without really thinking on the action. Swallowing thickly, she removed her hand and glanced back at him again. Her eyes were clearer than they'd been since she'd first spotted him. "Come on, let's get you a shirt." Glancing down along his chest, she noticed that there were faint goosebumps along his skin. "You look cold."

Bellamy's initial reaction would usually have been to flirt after a comment like that, but after hearing what her father had put her through he suddenly felt disgusted at the thought of trying anything sexual. Clearly it made her uncomfortable in more ways than one. It also explained why she'd been so violent about him calling her babe the night before. One of the men who'd attacked her must have called her that at some point.

Thankfully, Bellamy's tent was on the edge of the camp by the dropship, so all they had to do was circle around the perimeter of the camp to get to the back of the tent and sneak under the material. Instead of taking the shirt back, Bellamy just let her keep it while he searched for the extra one that he knew he had somewhere.

"Thanks again," she mumbled as she ducked back out from the back of the tent, out of sight of anyone. Bellamy watched her leave silently, a new shirt in his hands. He didn't mind parting with the last one, but it was strange to see someone else wearing it. Usually when a woman was wearing his clothing it was after he'd had sex with them—this was something completely new for him.

He also had no idea what compelled him to give up the article in the first place. Maybe it was because he was technically the reason her shirt had been lost in the first place. If he hadn't spooked her into running, it wouldn't have been left behind.

Cyra moved to rejoin the rest of the camp as she subconsciously tugged on the hem of Bellamy's shirt. She doubted that anyone would notice that it was his, or even that she was wearing something different than before, that's not something most people took notice of anyway. Everything was faded and torn or ripped anyway—no one had any type of outfit that really stood out.

"Hey, Cyra!"

Turned to where Sasha was still working on the fence, Cyra made her way back to the others. "Hey, you guys got a lot done," she said in greeting, taking in the additional couple of feet that had been added on since she'd been around.

"Yea, we wanted to get another set done before nightfall. It seems like a lot now, but…we still have the entire perimeter of the camp do to."

"It's a start," Cyra assured.

"How's your arm?" Sasha asked, glancing down at the strip of soaked, red cloth. "That…doesn't look much better."

"I've gotta go change the bandage, get a dry one. Do you guys need some help here, or-"

"Cyra!" Clarke's voice shouted from near the edge of the camp. Cyra let out a long, quiet sigh as she turned to look toward where the blonde was standing. Her annoyed expression bled away almost immediately, however, to see her standing with her familiar, dark grey sweater in hand. Clarke's expression was a mixture of confusion and annoyance, but when she watched Cyra's face pale at the sight of the material in her hands, she grew concerned.

"Sorry, I'll be right back," Cyra muttered to Sasha distractedly. Making her way toward Clarke, her walk was brisk, bordering on rushing. "Where did you get that?" she asked as soon as Clarke was in hearing distance, but keeping her tone even and low so that no one else's attention was drawn over to them suddenly.

"I was looking for the herbs that the Grounders used for Jasper when I found it. We're short on clothes as it is-"

"No, Clarke," Cyra interrupted as she stepped closet to the blonde. " _Where_  did you find it?" The urgency in Cyra's tone caused the privileged girl to swallow thickly.

"It was tied to a tree, a couple of minutes East of camp," she explained, handing the still damp material over to Cyra. The woman immediately turned it over, searching for the bloodstain that had been on the arm. It was faint from her washing it, but still there. "Why didn't you have it?"

Opening her mouth to answer, Cyra could only stare down at the sweater in disbelief.


	10. Building Bridges to Mountaintops

Cyra's mouth felt suddenly dry, making it difficult to swallow as she clutched her shirt in her hand. Clarke was still standing in front of her, obviously expecting an answer for why Cyra's shirt had been tied around a random tree. "I was…washing it. The blood stain. I guess someone from the camp thought they'd pull a prank on me," she finally answered, her words somewhat dull as she turned the material over in her hands, searching out the stain. Faintly, it was still there.

"Didn't do a very good job," Clarke muttered before she turned her back on the older woman, her annoyance clear on her face again. Cyra stepped back once Clarke had turned away, spinning on her toes as her eyes scanned over the camp.

She couldn't see Bellamy anywhere, so she assumed he was still in his tent.

Casting one more quick glance to Clarke, who had turned her attention to Finn for the time being, Cyra made a calm, though hurried, dash for Bellamy's tent. She didn't linger outside of it, or wait for him to learn of her presence, but threw herself through the flaps and into the small space. Apparently, Bellamy had been about to leave and she immediately ran into him, hitting his chest and nearly throwing them both off balance.

"Whoa! What the hell-"

"My shirt!" Cyra gasped out, interrupting him as she righted herself and took a stumbling step away from him, his hands falling away from her arms where'd they sought for leverage. Holding up the material in her hands, she watched as Bellamy's eyes widened, recognizing the dark grey as quickly as she had a minute prior. Snatching the sweater away, he looked down at the bloodstain that stared back at him.

"Where'd you find it?" he asked quickly, stepping up to her as he kept his voice low.

"Clarke found it. Tied to a tree."

Just as she was sure she had, his face paled as he realized that they had been very wrong in their assumptions. Animals didn't tie things around trees—it had been a long shot to believe that they would steal a shirt for a tiny bloodspot on it as well. Both were so focused on the discovery Clarke had inadvertently brought to their attention that they didn't realize they were standing a hair's width apart, Bellamy's breath a ghost against Cyra's cheeks. And she wasn't afraid, didn't shake or flinch back.

"Do you think it was a grounder?" he asked a moment later, looking up into those mismatched eyes. He would only look into one at a time, so he stared forward at the sky blue one that reminded him of the times he'd seen Earth through the windows of the Ark, so clear and bright. Or the sky, when they'd first opened up the door to the dropship.

Cyra hesitated. "Clarke said she found it on the East end of camp. The creek is on the West end. Whoever took that would have to have been fast and know the forest around them, go around the camp and not through it. It wouldn't have been one of ours."

"How far out?"

"A couple of minutes, but that's all she said to me."

"Does Clarke know?" Bellamy asked after a moment, his jaw taut with nerves.

Cyra shook her head, "No, she's too annoyed with me to put blame past myself, going on about being short on clothing anyway."

Snorting in disdain, Bellamy turned away from Cyra and lifted a hand to run it tiredly down his face. "A grounder…was right there."

Cyra blinked in confusion for a moment before she realized what he meant. If it had been a grounder, it would have been right there at the creek. It would have been so close to her, to them both, that it snatched the shirt as soon as Bellamy had ran after Cyra when she booked it away from him. That was the only way he/she could have gotten the shirt, circled camp and tied it to the tree before Clarke found it and brought it back with her.

Her entire body twitched uncomfortably at the thought. Had they been lurked behind the bushes? Had they ran past them without even seeing the grounder?

Bellamy turned back to Cyra, only then realizing that he was still holding her sweater in his free hand. However, as soon as he looked at Cyra he forgot all about it and simply tossed it onto the bed next to him. The woman had gone from pale to  _white_ , the distress of the thought clear on her face. "He was…he-"

Bellamy didn't say anything but immediately reached out for her. It shocked him when she didn't flinch away from him, or even react to being touched. He could feel her trembling slightly and wondered what had drawn such a reaction out of her. But then again, this was the woman who'd gone into a full blown panic attack from something as simple as someone seeing her scars. She'd also been the one who'd really seen what had happened to Jasper, she'd been there when the Grounder had speared him from across the river, before her eyes.

Wrapping his arms around the woman, her joints locked up from the contact before gradually releasing into a semi-relaxed posture. "I don't want you going anywhere alone, alright? No more solitary food scavenging, either."

"We didn't even know he was there, Bellamy," she muttered against his shoulder, the hot feel of her breath reaching him through the thin material.

"We will from now on," he answered, his tone angry and determined. He was already sick and tired of these bastards being ahead of them. They'd probably been watching the group when they'd gone out to Mount Weather the entire time, maybe even been watching the camp. His sister had been out there, she could have been the one lying in the dropship with a hole in her chest. It made his arms constrict subconsciously around Cyra.

It could have been her, too.

Suddenly, Cyra's arms were around his torso, returning his constricting embrace. He fought against tensing in surprise, only showing the surprise on his face which she could not see. She was holding onto him, returning his touch. It was a great improvement from short minutes before, when she'd been fighting for her life to get out of his arms.

"What if you hadn't been there?" she asked suddenly.

His blood ran cold.

If he hadn't been there…she could very well have been killed. Or taken. Beaten. Anything. She wouldn't have had any reason to run, she wouldn't have dropped her shirt and taken off because of him. He wouldn't have raced after her, confronted and comforted her. One simple action, one decision of not following her would have changed it all.

It very well could have been her strung up in a tree instead of her sweater.

"You're still here," he assured, but his voice was rough. "You're safe."

Cyra wanted to just go limp when he said that. People had tried to tell her that in the past—Dr. Griffin had tried to tell her that, since her father was dead and couldn't be there to hurt her anymore—but this was the first time she actually felt like it was the truth. This was the first time someone had held her and she didn't feel threatened or scared. Bellamy, somehow, made her feel safe.

Inhaling the smell that rose up from his shirt, his skin and his hair, she relaxed her neck to let her forehead fall against his shoulder.

"You have to set up some rules for the camp, before someone else wanders off and gets hurt, or taken, or-"

"I'll let people know. They're aware of the Grounders, that's a start. But no one here really knows the threat they could be. We haven't seen any other signs of them until now."

" _Hey, Bell!_ "

The two flinched apart instantaneously, Octavia's voice interrupting the silence that had filled the tent moments before the flaps of his tent flew apart and his younger sister ducked inside, jolting in surprise when Cyra was the first person she saw.

"What's going on?" she asked immediately, on edge about the appearance of the two. Cyra looked more pale than usual and Bellamy was oddly tense, his face set into a bit more a frown than she was used to seeing. Had they been arguing about something?"

"I found a creek this morning, I'd heard that a close water source was still on a 'to find' list," Cyra answered.

"And, I found this," Bellamy added on, quickly snatching her shirt from where he'd dropped it on the bed. "Hang it up now and it should be dry by tonight," he added on when he realized it was wet and she only had a short sleeved shirt on. The nights were pretty cold, even inside the dropship, and he wasn't aware of any extra jackets lying around. The ones that Wells had taken off of the dead kids had been snatched up pretty quickly, so her sweater was the only thing she had to keep warm in the approaching cold season.

"Thanks," Cyra muttered as she accepted the damp material. "See you later, Octavia," she said quickly to the younger woman before she slipped passed her and vacated the tent. The younger Blake sibling turned to watch her leave before she turned back to her brother, a sour and contemplating look on her face. She wasn't sure that was exactly what the two had been doing, but Cyra had a pretty good poker face apparently. She wasn't able to tell if the older woman had been lying. They didn't act like anything had been happening, but Octavia found the thought oddly…unsettling.

"What did I tell you about going after her, Bell?" she snapped at her brother, who immediately went from tense to irritated.

"For Christ sake, Octavia. Nothing was going on!"

Octavia scoffed in disbelief. "Was she wearing your shirt?"

Cyra tried to take deep, calming breaths as soon as she was free of the tent. However, all that seemed to do was draw Bellamy's smell up into her lungs since she was still wearing his shirt. Lifting a hand to the hem of the shirt, she fingered the soft material silently as her eyes darted around the camp, taking in everyone that she could see. She didn't know if all of the remaining one hundred were still in the camp, but she suddenly had the urge to do roll-call.

Instead, she headed for the dropship to find some new strips of bandage for her arm before the dirty ones gave her an infection.

"Hey, haven't seen you all day," Monty greeted when she ascended the ladder, her sweater tossed over one shoulder so her hands were free.

"Sorry, I was recruited for wall-building detail," she explained as she stepped onto flat ground again. "Got any bandages I could steal from you?" Monty's eyes flicked down to her arm, taking in the red bandage through the dim lighting and immediately pulled a bag of strips from beside Jasper. While he was doing that, Cyra crouched down beside the sickly boy.

Jasper looked worse than when she'd left that morning, a cold sweat covering him from head to toe and his breathing sounded like someone trying to inhale through a straw. "He's not doing good," she mumbled sadly as her brow furrowed, hand reaching out to lie the back of her palm over his forehead. The heat that radiated off his skin made her want to flinch.

"Clarke's trying hard to find the plants used by the Grounders, but no such luck," Monty explained to her as he motioned for her to sit in front of him. Clarke had showed him how to change Jasper's bandage, since he was the one who spent all of his time with the unconscious adolescent, so he knew how to take care of her arm.

Cyra sat still, her arm held out for him, and watched as he untied Bellamy's knot with nimble fingers and unwound it from her arm. The dried blood and traces of puss had caused it to stick to her skin, leaving Monty with no choice but to pry it off with force, reopening the wound as well. Dipping a clean rag into a tin of water, he began dapping and soaking the graze to collect the blood and try to stem the flow. "I think this is getting infected," he muttered in concern, but Clarke would know better.

Sighing loudly, Cyra tipped her head back at the news. "I'll have to go and see the local Doc then, huh?"

"She's not so bad," Monty tried to defend. He had no issue with Clarke, but he noticed the way that she and Wells treated Cyra. Clarke was subconsciously reading Wells' insecurities about Cyra and that caused her to lash out at the woman, but it was also Cyra's clear dislike for the privileged on the Ark. Having heard her life before prison, he realised that she would have lived by bare bones and shear will alone.

Cyra only snorted in reply, the unladylike sound making Monty grin in amusement. It was unflattering and ugly, but Cyra showed no care about what other people thought of her. It was refreshing.

When the bleeding from her arm had stopped, Monty wrapped it in a new bandage and made her swear that she would go and see Clarke the next time she was required to change the bandage. Before she left again, Cyra hung up her sweater to dry on the edge of a piece of metal, the seats that had been there long since ripped out and taken outside as seating.

When they'd landed on Earth, she hadn't expected her days to consist of killer snake, killer grounders, killer cats and finally, near death frights. She'd opened her eyes to a blue sky and green Earth, taking in the beauty of the land and the smell of clean air which would never have a shortage. She had been so excited and now she dreaded what lay just beyond there slowly growing walls.

Glancing out through the trees, toward the sky, Cyra guessed that there would only be a few hours of daylight left.

Falling to sit on the edge of the ramp, she pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. A headache was slowly creeping in and she wished that she had something to stop it.

"You okay?"

Octavia moved to sit next to her friend, a faint limp still present in her step. Cyra looked up to her with a look that spoke of bone-weary exhaustion and fear. "Why can't we ever catch a break?" she asked her friend, thinking back to all of the days they'd just laid on the cots and spoken about the most inane, random things. It was so pointless and yet she missed it.

Shaking her head, Octavia found herself mirroring her friend's look. "I don't know. I'm hoping that when all of this is said and done, we'll have the best lives someone could ask for. Live like Queens."

Cyra grinned at her answer, nodding along with the imaginary future. "I'd settle for free and at peace. Seems you can't get that these days without death being the one who gives it to you."

This was one of the first times Octavia had heard her friend speak so bleakly, but Bellamy had explained to what had happened to her—leaving out certain details—so she could understand the underlying dear and helplessness that Cyra was feeling. "Bell told me about your sweater—I was wondering why you were wearing his shirt. He's forbade me from leaving the camp. Again."

Cyra found herself shaking her head, more amused with him than anything. "It might seem like the most annoying thing in the world, 'Tavia, but he's just trying to protect you. He wants you safe. It'll be overbearing, but it's…love. He loves you and he'd move mountains for you. So maybe cut him some slack."

She could see the guilt that bled into Octavia's expression, but she could tell that the teenage girl was still annoyed with Bellamy's overprotective big brother routine. "I can understand him wanting to protect me from the Grounders, but there's some things he needs to butt out of."

"I'm sure he'd say the same thing," she pointed out, watching Octavia flinch. After all, the younger sibling had been the one to confront him on Cyra's current state of dress. Then, Cyra laughed as she straightened up and her eyes lightened just a little bit. "So, this is what siblings act like!"

"Shut up," Octavia snapped jokingly at the older woman. Truthfully, she was just happy that Cyra wasn't sad anymore. Well, that wasn't completely honest—she could still see it lingering in her eyes, but that was all that remained of it.

She was making an effort to hide it from her.


	11. Cleanse My Soul of Malice

Cyra sat around the fire with some of the other survivors, feeling strangely…at home. She hadn't expected such acceptance from other prisoners; she'd never met them before after all. It was almost like they knew, everyone knew, when to trust someone and when not to. Sitting among Sasha, Brandon and Matt, along with a couple of others who seemed to know her but she did not know them.

A distant rumble of thunder vibrated the air around them. "I wonder if it will rain again," Sasha gasped happily. She found that she loved the rain, even if she got wet and cold from it. None of them had seen rain before coming to Earth, so it was a magnificent sight and wondrous feeling to have water soak through your clothes and touch your flesh in a refreshing, new way.

"I hope so, we're running out of water in those barrels," Matt agreed, glancing up at the black sky. The clouds were thick and masked the moon and stars, leaving them in darkness if they happened to lose their flame.

"Did they figure out a way to cover the fires, yet?" Cyra asked, glancing among the faces around her.

"Yea!" one of the younger boys, couldn't have been more than fifteen, answered her. "They took some metal paneling from inside the dropship and bent it like a roof. That way it won't burn like a wooden shelter."

"Smart," Cyra commented with an approving nod. It caused the boy to beam happily, taking it as a compliment to himself even though he hadn't been the one to think of it. "If it does rain, we'll get to test those out."

When it had rained back at the camp days before, it had been while she was out with Clarke and the others, heading for Mount Weather. The storm had passed right by them, directly over the camp but missing the troupe that had been on the adjacent mountain. Cyra found herself wondering what it was like; she wasn't sure how much she liked swimming, since it wasn't the best of experiences the past two times she'd had the honor, but she did like water. And she did wonder what it would be like to experience standing beneath the rain.

"Do you like the rain?" Sasha asked innocently, looking over to Cyra.

"I was with the group to Mouth Weather, never found out," she answered back, leaning her elbows on her knees. "I'll admit; I hope it rains so I can find out."

Sasha smiled at the answer, nodding her head encouragingly. Another sharp rumble of thunder punctuated her words, causing them all to look upward. Brandon's eyes were trained on Cyra, her head tipped back and exposing the long expanse of pale skin along her throat. She truly was the palest person that he had yet to see, but he also believed that it made her look beautiful in her own way. Like the marble statues they'd learned about—rather pointlessly—back on the Ark.

"It's getting closer," Cyra mumbled, more to herself than any of them.

She was still in only the t-shirt that Bellamy had given to her, her arms mostly exposed, along with the bandage that circled her arm from Wells' bullet graze. She had yet to seek out Clarke to get the girl's opinion on whether or not it was infected, but it hadn't been hurting any more than usual so she felt that was good enough for the time being. However, it was starting to grow colder as the night closed in and the storm rumbled overhead.

Hopefully, her sweater had had enough time to dry. In the same instance, though, it was an unsettling thought about wearing it. What they assumed was a Grounder had held it, ran off with it. She felt it was…dirty, somehow.

Brandon looked away from her when she returned her attention down to the fire, green and blue eyes dancing with the movements of the flames.

"We should cover the fires," she said suddenly, rising to her full height. As they were all sitting down on logs, close to the ground, it made them feel as though she was a giant. "Who's in charge of that?" she asked, glancing again to the boy who had answered her the first time.

"Oh! Atom was put in charge of it!"

Cyra remembered when Bellamy had spoken with Atom before they'd gone to save Jasper from the Grounders. She knew what he looked like and was certain that wherever Bellamy's group was, he was sure to be with them. "Thanks," she offered with a smile, getting another bright one in reply from him, before she turned to head toward the other fires, eyes seeking out a familiar face.

Thankfully, she had been accurate with where to find him. Sitting with Murphy and Bellamy, as well as others she didn't know the names of, Atom was silently staring down into the fire as the others laughed and joked around him. Distantly, she could hear Jasper groan in pain from inside the dropship, muffles by the walls and floors of metal.

"Hey, Atom," she greeted, gaining the males attention with a bit of surprise on his face. "There's a storm coming in, the thunder's getting closer by the minute. I hear you were in charge of sheltering the fires so they don't go out."

"Yea," he answered immediately, rising to his feet. Had she not known better, she'd have assumed he was trying to get away from the boys around the fire. "Care to lend a hand?"

Nodding along, she followed after Atom as he left his supposed friends behind. She could feel them burning holes into her back as she walked away, but she didn't dare look back and instead kept her eyes focused keen on Atom, watching as he tapped people on the way passed. She assumed they were the ones he'd been working with. The others went to work covering the two fires they had on the far side, while Atom and Cyra took the one to cover the fire that Bellamy and his troop were sitting at.

"The metal heats up pretty quickly, but at least it won't burn," Atom explained to Cyra as he showed her the bent piece they would be carrying. "We had to take metal beams because we were afraid the hot metal would burn the sticks we'd first picked out."

"Probably," Cyra agreed, taking her end and two of the beams, Atom supporting the other side while carrying two beams as well—they were just metal rods pulled from the dropship, like most of their supplies were.

It only took about two minutes for them to set up the structure, digging the beams into the ground so they were secured before putting the fitted metal overtop. It caused smoke to pour out from beneath the metal, but at least they wouldn't go out. A flash of lightning lit the sky as Cyra stepped away from the metal structure, eyes turning upward, before thunder shook the Earth a second later.

Then, the sky opened up.

Rain dropped down on them like a sheet, survivors crying out in surprise at the downpour from all over the camp.

At first, Cyra did nothing more than close her eyes, protecting them against the assault of water that fell from the overhanging sky in torrents. Inhaling deeply, the touch of the rain on the ground released a fresh, moist scent from the Earth that was so overwhelmingly pleasant that Cyra began inhaling deeply over and over, the same as she had the first day. And again, it made her lightheaded to do so.

"I forgot you guys didn't get rained on."

Bellamy stepped up beside the woman, watching her bask in the rain. It was already cold that night and the storm only made it more so, but she didn't look to have a care in the world as she stood beneath the natural shower from the sky. Rivets of water trailed along her cheeks, pouring off her pointed chin and over her slightly parted lips, dipping between to tease her teeth.

Then, she let out a breathless laugh as a smile lit her features, eyes opening to meet his gaze. "It's cold," she marvelled, holding her hands out in front of her to catch the droplets on her palms.

And Bellamy was struck.

He'd seen other survivors around the camp taking in their new surroundings, basking in the freshness of Earth; the contrast from the Ark they had all been born and raised on—but this was different. The look that came over Cyra's face, the expression she wore so openly, it made Bellamy's heart stutter. When it rained that first night most of the survivors had loved to drink the water, feeling it on the skin without worrying about running out. But Cyra…she marvelled that it was _cold._ She just closed her eyes and smiled, taking it all in while she could.

Her shirt was soon plastered to her thin torso, outlining her boney figure while also making it possible to trace the outline of her bra. It reminded him of how she looked after Finn had pushed her into the river, only her lips were now touched with a faint, but honest smile.

Her head tipped back as the cold droplets cascaded down her face, the firelight making the pale skin of her throat glow like white silk in moonlight. It reminded him just how pale she was. Most of the time, they all had so much dirt on their skin, they look like they'd been tanned by the sun all their lives. He remembered the first moment he'd seen her, stepping into their group abruptly to volunteer for the away trip to the mountain.

Hollow cheeks, pale skin, mismatched eyes of green and blue. They'd looked…haunted. Lonely. Her hair was probably lighter than when he'd first seen it, darkened with body oils and slicked backward against her skull, falling into loose waves and curls around her neck and shoulders. She was tall, much taller than he'd seen most women back on the ark. She was someone from the working levels, he could tell immediately, but at the same time she was skinny as a twig. Fit as a malnourished person could be.

She'd avoided looking at Octavia at first, almost obviously, but the second she'd first spoken his sister had straightened up like someone had shocked her spine. She'd recognized her friend's voice instantly.

When they'd had some time to sit and talk, she'd told him about Cyra. How they'd been the only friendly voice the other heard—the guards were less than kind to them, so they usually tried to keep quiet and out of their way. Octavia would lie on her cot, stretched out on her stomach to face the grate, and listen to Cyra's voice whisper through the metal, telling her stories about the people she knew when she was a kid, keeping names and places out of it so as not to reveal anything she wishes to keep secret. Cyra was what kept her from losing her mind in that little box, and judging by how happy the older woman was to see Octavia, it had been mutual.

His thoughts were broken when she suddenly gave a tremendous shudder, the cold finally getting to her and causing her skin to pebble as her muscles tensed.

But that smile remained across her lips, softening her narrow bone structure.

Looking around, there were very few who lingered around the fires—most had sought refuge in their makeshift tents or the dropship. Anywhere that was dry and away from the wind.

"Come on," Bellamy said quietly, not wanting to break the moment but knowing that they should get out of the rain. "I doubt you want to get sick out here." Taking her uninjured bicep gently in his hands, he tugged with the faintest amount of pressure to guide her in the direction of his tent, closer and less crowded than the dropship.

She hesitated still, but with another nudge she was moving to follow him, wiping some of the water off of her face so she didn't get it in her eyes. If anything, the rain had only continued to come down harder after the initial drop. It was a good thing that she had hung her sweater up to dry, otherwise she'd have nothing else to change into. That, however, didn't seem that it was going to happen soon, as Bellamy hauled her under the protective cover of his tent, not the dropship.

Thankfully, everyone else was distracted by something and didn't notice when Bellamy pulled her behind the protective entrance of his tent, blocking them from view. Even though the wind and rain was blocked out, the sudden still air caused Cyra to shiver even more, her hands wiping at her face and hair, trying to put the wet strands away from her skin. The touch of her own hair made her shiver tremendously.

Bellamy watched as she shook her hands, droplets of water flying off of the tips of her fingers. Even though she had been in the tent before, she still looked around at the interior curiously. It wasn't like he was able to decorate or anything, it was just draped parachute with a bunch of blankest draped on the ground, making up his bed. With her hair flattened with water, it let him see just how long it actually was, reaching mid-back. A bit longer than Octavia's.

"It has its own smell," she mumbled, turning to look at Bellamy with an excitement in her eyes. "The rain. I never would have thought it would smell a certain way."

Her happiness over the entire ordeal made him smile back. It was contagious, it seemed. Even in the darkness of the tent, he could make out her pale flesh and the definition of her body. The light from the nearest fire breached the translucent material of the parachute, giving a dusky rose and gold hue to the two standing inside. The sight of the flames visible through the tent drew Cyra's attention, turning toward the tent exterior.

Doing so, her face was painted with the rose and gold as her hands pulled her hair back and up, exposing her thin neck and lifting the heavy set of hair from her back. The resulting shift of her shoulders and shirt, tightening around her collar and breasts for further definition, caused Bellamy's cheeks to burn as he watched the movement. She must have not been aware she was so alluring at that moment. Having been drawn to looking at her chest, he noticed that the chill of the water and wind had more than just made her flesh pebble, but also caused her nipples to strain against her shirt.

Swallowing around the sudden thickness in his throat, Bellamy turned away from her to retrieve one of the blankets from his makeshift bed. "Here," he offered, shaking it out and opening it for her. "You're gunna freeze yourself."

Draping over her shoulders and wrapping her in the blanket, her back against his chest as she distractedly grasped the edges of the blanket at her chest. Her hair dropped down to drape his arm when she did, leaving him to flinch slightly at the cold feel of it. He thought his shaggy hair was cold on his neck, hers felt like ice coming in contact with his bare arm.

"My sweater," she commented dazedly after a second. "It's still in the ship."

"It's gunna be a fight to get through the others if you want to get your sweater," he commented, remembering the mad dash most of the survivors had made to get back to the dropship when it started to rain. "Just take your wet shirt off," he offered, before flinching at his own words. Not the best thing to say to someone who'd been sexually traumatized by ship guards before she'd even had the chance to mature into a young adult. "I mean-"

"I know," she assured, glancing back to him. "Don't worry."

"Sorry," he blurted out abashedly, stepping away from her to strip off his own soaked shirt. Cyra watched him a moment, only able to really see the muscles of his back shift as he pulled the soaked shirt off of his arms, the material sticking to his skin. There were hints of scars from his years working on the ark, but she could see that it had toughened him over the years, preparing for the need for survival here on Earth.

Glancing back, Bellamy caught Cyra's eyes as she watched him. Unlike him, however, she didn't jerk away or fearfully turn her eyes. She was appraising him in a way that wasn't sexual, something that he wasn't very accustomed to. When women on the ark or here on the ground had been taking time to look at him, it was usually someone who was only doing so by a physical attraction. Cyra seemed to be appraising the strength of a fellow survivor, examining the history and story that could be told by his body.

After a second of calm eye contact, she finally glanced away. "Sorry," she offered, repeating his earlier shy comment. Turning her back on him again, he only watched a moment more—the movements happening beneath the blanket told him that she was trying to get the wet shirt off while preserving modesty beneath the blanket.

Short minutes later, both of their shirts were hung up on the metal side of the dropship that his tent attached to, along with Cyra's pants. She was wrapped entirely in the blanket that he had given her, not even a hint of skin visible to him aside from her hands and her neck and face. She had pulled a section of the entrance flap away so she could look outside without entirely opening the tent. The sight of the rain falling amazed her, especially watching the silhouette of it falling before the bright fires—the flames had dulled as the fire ate through the wood, but the rain had yet to touch them.

Sitting back from her, Bellamy was shocked by how fascinated she was by the rain. For him, it was amazing after being on the Ark for so long, but he wasn't as overwhelmed as she was. It left him to wonder what it was about this particular even that sparked in interest to keenly.

"Why do you find it so fascinating?" he asked after silence had stretched between them for a few minutes.

Cyra inhaled deeply as she pondered. "I don't really know," she admitted suddenly. "It's just so…fresh. Untouched and pure. It's kind of like when we first got out of the dropship and the forest was so beautiful and green, so new to us. The rain is kind of similar for me right now; it's new and unique, something I never thought I would have the chance to bear witness to."

Glancing over her shoulder to him, her eyes were soft and kind as a warm smile graced her lips.

"Even with everything happening to us down here, the Grounders and the lack of food, I can't regret being here. We're _free_." Holding his eyes, she didn't seem shy about his presence in that moment. "The rain…it washes away the stains from living on the Ark. It helps me feel _clean_ again."

Bellamy didn't need to ask what she meant by clean. And he knew that it was more than just the filth of the ark she was referring to, but also the events that had led to her incarceration in Solitary. What those men, and her father, had done to her must have left her feeling disgusted with herself. Self-hate was a dangerous thing, but when you're locked up for years with nothing but that hate, it could manifest into something dangerous.

If all it took was the rain to help her relieve the burden of that hate, Bellamy was happy to provide her with shelter once she was content.


	12. Judge Not My Flaws

Cyra was warm. She hadn't been warm like this in a _very_ long time, whether on the Ark or on Earth, so it was oddly unsettling when she woke and realized she was comfortably protected from the chill. Cracking her eyes open, it was still quite dark but a faint, teasing light was beginning to show through the thin material of the tent as the sun began to rise. Blinking in confusion, she recognized the wall of Bellamy's tent, attached to the side of the dropship but secluded from everyone else. Glancing down, she realized that she was so warm because of the blanket that she was still wrapped in—her clothing was still hung next to Bellamy's, now dry from the rain that had fallen the previous night.

Then the sound of a deep inhale behind her caused her to jerk in surprise, her head snapping up from where it had been resting. Behind her, Bellamy was stretched out across his bed, lying on his side so he was facing her back, with his hand tucked beneath the pillow she had just been lying on. His hair was a mess from sleep, and the blanket he had been covered with was falling from his body due to movements in the night. He seemed to be bleeding warmth, the heat from his body reaching her without him actually touching her. He was close, but not _that_ close.

Knowing that if anyone caught her either in his tent, or sneaking out of it, she'd never hear the end of the gossip and so therefore needed to get a move on before anyone else woke up. Glancing back to make sure that Bellamy was indeed still sleeping, Cyra carefully slipped from the blanket that had been wrapped around her. Wearing only undergarments made her skin prickle uncomfortably, but Bellamy's legs were on the blanket so she couldn't use that to preserve modesty.

The cold air almost made her crawl back into the protective warmth of the blanket, and Bellamy's furnace like temperature, but she knew she needed to leave.

Snagging the worn pants first, she hurriedly pulled them up her legs before slipping her shirt over her head, not bothering to do the pants up right away since the shirt now covered down past the hemline. Ducking by the entrance, she pulled her socks and shoes on with as much grace as possible. Blonde hair was a mess atop her head, she could feel some strands stuck at off angles from sleep, but she'd worry about that after. Glancing back at Bellamy again, her stomach fluttered nervously. She surprised herself with how easily it had been to fall asleep near him, as someone that she didn't know well and who knew about her secret.

Fastening the belt of her pants and checking that all of her clothes were on properly, and her shirt wasn't inside out or something to give people ideas, Cyra quietly leant over Bellamy and moved her blanket over his bare chest. Higher body temperature or not, it was too cold to be sleeping so exposed. He'd get sick at that rate.

Just as she had done the previous day after he'd given her his shirt, Cyra slipped out the back of the tent as silently as possible. The ground was still quite muddy from the heavy rainfall, forcing her to be extra careful with how she walked. She couldn't see anyone else outside, the rain having forced everyone to take cover in the few tents set up or the dropship itself.

Moving over to the fire pits, the metal was blackened from the heat the previous night. The fires had died out through the night and now not even smoldering ambers remained. The pits were cold with ash and damp wood. Standing alone in the openness of the camp, clusters of partially erected walls drawing her eyes around the vicinity, Cyra felt like she was alone again.

She couldn't remember the camp ever being this quiet.

Turning her focus to the treeline, she began to wonder if they were out there. Was a Grounder watching her right now? Scanning the expanse of moist greenery with her mismatched eyes, Cyra began to tense without even realizing.

"You're up early."

The sudden words caused Cyra to tense abruptly, though she was able to catch herself before she physically jumped or reacted. Looking toward the dropship, Brandon was approached carefully through the soggy ground, letting the moist dirt quiet his approach. She scolded herself mentally for not being away of him, but didn't let it show as she gave a nod in greeting and a hesitant smile.

"Aren't you cold?" he asked, taking in her bare arms and the bandage that was visible under the shirtsleeve.

"I'm used to it, I guess," she mumbled in reply, glancing away from him to look at the burned out fire pits. They'd need to find a way to dry some wood for more fires. "Why are you up?"

"Didn't really sleep much. Too many people crammed into that damn ship. Figured I'd rather be cold out here than sandwiched between two dudes who reek of sweat and feet." Cyra's lips twitched against her will and she looked away to withhold a laugh. She could understand why he'd run off if that was the case. "I didn't see you leave."

Damn it. She did not need people knowing that she'd slept in Bellamy's tent through the night. Even if nothing had happened, it was a group of hormonal teenagers that were more than happy to start a rumour about her sleeping with him if they had even the faintest inkling of a possibility. "Been out here a while," she lied. "Rain stopped hours ago." And she could only say that with any semblance of confidence in her lie because the state of the ground told her that it had been at least a few hours since the rain has passed, or there was be a much muddier camp.

Brandon seemed to buy it and nodded along. "Smart. Seems I wasn't the only one who'd rather be out here."

"Sure," she agreed indirectly, shrugging her shoulders. She'd rather be out there alone, whether the Grounders were making her paranoid or not. It wasn't that she disliked Brandon for any reason; she just preferred to be alone rather than to have practical strangers sticking nearby. Stepping away from Brandon again, she moved to the barrels that had been set up to collect the rain water.

"Did we get a lot?"

"Yea," she mumbled in response, taking in the faint reflection that looked back at her from the depths of the barrel. That was something that was so foreign to her after all this time; she hadn't seen her reflection since before she'd gone into lockup, so it was weird to have one image of herself in her mind while looking at another.

"You okay?" Brandon asked, his voice suddenly a lot closer. This time, Cyra did flinch back as she sidestepped where he had suddenly appeared at her right side, putting a couple of feet between them. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."

"It's okay. Guess I'm just so used to be alone in solitary, it's hard to remember what it's like around other people sometimes."

He offered what he probably assumed to be a comforting smile, but it just made Cyra twitch and want to back up again. "I can't imagine being in solitary. Like to talk too much."

"Yea, not much of that going on," she mumbled. "Ever gotten a headache from silence before?"

The question left the younger of the two blinking in surprise, wondering for a moment if she was pulling his leg before he noticed the completely serious look in her eyes. "Uh….no, can't say that I have."

"Lucky you."

"Cyra!"

_Thank god._

Octavia jogged over to them from the dropship, Cyra's now dry sweater in her hand as she smiled in greeting. "Morning! I saved this for you last night, some of the other girls were eyeing it and I couldn't find you to give it to you then."

"Thanks, I was worried it would get snatched up." Taking the sweater from her closest friend, Cyra was relieved to have something familiar and comforting in her hands. Out of anything on her person, her seater had lasted the longest through her growth-spurts and all her years in solitary. To lose that after having just found it again would hurt, even though the thought of a Grounder with it still unsettled her somewhat.

"So, wanna go get something to eat? Since Bell still has that whole 'no going out alone' thing?"

"Sure," Cyra agreed immediately, pulling her sweater over her head. It felt strange with the t-shirt sleeves from Bellamy's shirt, accustomed as she was to only having her tank top with no sleeves. For a moment, she was worried that he was going to assume that meant he was invited to come along as well, but Octavia beat her to that.

"No boys!" she scolded, keeping her tone playful even though there was a cutting warning in her eyes when she looked back at him. Brandon just held his hands up in defense—he'd heard what had happened to Atom when the kid had tried to get with Bellamy's sister, he was _not_ going to risk stepping on any toes just to go with the girls to eat.

Cyra sighed openly in relief once they were a couple of yards away from him, Octavia latched onto her uninjured arm as they entered the surrounding forest.

"He's trying a bit too hard, isn't he?" her friend asked with a faint snicker, resisting the urge to look back at him as she spoke.

"I really don't like the attention," Cyra mumbled, glaring at the dirt ahead of them. "He makes my hair stand on end, and not in a good way."

Octavia frowned as she looked at Cyra with a closer eye; she'd been able to see her friends discomfort the second she'd stepped out of the dropship, but she hadn't realized it was _this_ bad. It did make sense, though. Cyra had been in Solitary for a longer period of time and her best defense so far was to keep people at arm's length.

She wasn't blind. She had noticed that Cyra shied from most physical contact—especially from men. The odd clap on the back made her jump and she tensed if people stood within a foot of her person. It was also hard not to notice that Bellamy and Cyra had formed a silent bond, especially since he'd told her about what had happened with Cyra's sweater. He'd left some things out, which was obvious, and whatever he'd left out must have been whatever calmed Cyra's avoiding nature—at least in regards to him.

"Well, I'm here to protect you from all the overbearing, perverted guys from the Skybox," Octavia teased, getting a snort from Cyra as the other woman finally began to relax.

Octavia would be lying if she said she wasn't curious about what had happened to Cyra before she was put in Solitary; her behavior around others was a lot more than just someone was wasn't accustomed to contact anymore. It reminded the brunette of the way abused girls acted; the thought of Cyra having been beaten or mentally abused by someone—more than likely her father—caused Octavia's jaw to lock in anger. That wasn't right. A parent was meant to cherish their child, even a mistake like her had been loved by her mother up until the end.

"My hero," Cyra teased back, her eyes dancing with mirth as she tugged on the arm Octavia had looped around hers, drawing her deeper into the forest as she followed the path she'd taken before.

They didn't stay away for long; Bellamy was sure to wake soon and even if his sister had someone with her he was too overprotective not to notice and worry. The women drank from the fresh water of the stream, flowing more strongly from the night's rainfall, and munched on the bitter plants that Cyra had found.

"We need more meat," Octavia commented on their way back, picking greenery from her teeth. Cyra hummed in agreement beside her, busy running her long fingers through her hair to try and remove some of the tangles that had begun to knot in the strands. "I wonder if any of the others know how to hunt."

"There's probably a few who'll have the basic idea," Cyra answered, flipping her hair back of her shoulder, "but that's not the same as being experienced with it. There'll have to be a few fumbled attempts before any of them really know what they're doing. Practice means experience."

Octavia sighed, tossing her head back in annoyance. "That's true. So that probably means more nasty plants for a few days."

Cyra grinned before she nudged the other woman with her shoulder. "You'll live. Better than having nothing to eat; and you've got to admit, it's heavenly in comparison to the crap we were eating up in Solitary. By a _long_ shot."

"Okay, there's no arguing with that," Octavia conceded, hands rising in surrender. "I wish you'd had some of the meat before, though. You're already skin and bones to begin with!"

"Hey, I pull off skin and bones pretty good if I say so myself," Cyra teased back with a smirk, nudging Octavia with her hip as they rounding the portion of the fence that had gone up around the camp. "Besides, what's done is done. Can't change it now. I'll eat when we have more food, but in the meantime I'll make do."

Octavia frowned at her friend, slowing her pace while Cyra continued to walk in the direction of the dropship. She'd mentioned a few minutes before that she had to see Clarke about her arm, so Octavia knew not to follow, but her eyes trailed after the other woman in concern. "You shouldn't have to," she finally mumbled to herself, Cyra already too far to hear her speak. Her eyes followed the blonde until she'd disappeared through the dropship entrance, dodging past some people coming out, before turning to find where her brother was already standing with Murphy and some others.

She was not even going near that problem right now. Instead, she made her way into the clusters of people that had already gotten up for the day, sipping at the rainwater they'd collected.

Cyra didn't have to go far to find Clarke; kneeling next to Jasper, the other blonde was grumbling to herself as she inspected the plant that the Grounders had used to save his life the first time. "Hey."

Clarke jumped at the sudden voice, so deep in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed someone else come up the ladder. Monty barely glanced up from his work, having already noticed the taller woman emerge, before he returned his focus to the task at hand. He was relieved that Cyra had actually done as he'd suggested and gone to Clarke.

"Yea?" Clarke asked somewhat hesitantly, eyeing the woman that towered over her. Clarke was crouched down now, but Cyra was imposingly tall even if Clarke was standing at her full height.

"Monty says he thinks my arm's getting infected, I was wondering if you had some time to look at it?" She hated having to ask Clarke, and the monotone, emotionless voice she was speaking in made that ever clear to the other blonde. "Do you?" she pressed when Clarke just continued to stare up at her, flinching slightly at the press in Cyra's voice. "Because if not I'll just go back to-"

"No, I can look at it," Clarke answered quickly and ended up jumbling her words slightly. "Um…it's kind of dark in here, though, is it alright if I look at it outside?"

"Sure." The clipped tone and one word answered was all she gave before turning and making her way back down the ladder, heading for the lower level of the dropship. Clarke hurried to put plant aside and snatched a clean bandage for Cyra's arm before she moved to follow. She didn't have any tools that she could bring with her to help Cyra, but she hoped that her arm wasn't too infected since she didn't have the means to deal with an infection on hand. The most she might be able to do it drain the infection away from the site of the wound and that could also make it worse. They didn't exactly have sterile tools or rooms to work in.

Cyra was already waiting on the ramp when Clarke joined her, arms folded across her chest as she watched the group she'd been working with continue the fence. "You…you'll have to take off your sweater," Clarke began, standing a couple feet shy of Cyra.

Cyra was mildly surprised at Clarke's sudden timidity with her. If she had to guess, it was because she'd thoroughly snapped at the young doctor-in-training, but it seemed to be more than that. Clarke was healthier in build than Cyra, but she was also much shorter and the older of the two knew that height was a good way to intimidate other people.

Her father had used it on her quite often when she was growing up, driving her into a corner so she couldn't escape.

However, she could care less if she'd hurt the little girl's pride and simply took the opportunity presented to her. So she shucked off her sweater where they stood, leaving her in the shirt given to her by Bellamy, and began to loosen the knot on the old bandage. Clarke was left blinking in surprise at the sight of Cyra wearing a different shirt, knowing her old one had been torn to shreds for Octavia's leg. She hadn't really thought on it the last time she'd seen her to hand over her sweater. Cyra's bicep was thin, but when she moved or flexed her arm there was visible muscle tone beneath the pasty flesh stretched taught over it.

As soon as she drew the old bandage away, Clarke forgot about their differences as she gasped faintly and stepped closer. "That's definitely infected," she answered quietly as she leaned close, knowing better than to suddenly reach out to grad for Cyra's arm. The graze was red and swollen, with a discharge leaking from the cracks in the scab—it wasn't blood, so Clarke assumed with was plasma or puss. "Have you been cleaning it?"

"Less than I should have, but yea," Cyra answered honestly, holding her arm up so Clarke didn't have to lean so close into her personal space.

"I don't have anything here that could treat infection," she admitted, stepping back as she tried to think. "The only thing I could do is try to drain it, but we don't exactly have the proper tools…"

"Could you use plants to help?" Cyra asked with a quirk of her brow. She did not like the sound of 'drain it', so she'd rather bust her ass looking for a plant out in the woods.

"I haven't seen anything; I've been trying to find something for Jasper but there's been no luck. The best chance we have is to clean yours out."

Cyra scowled. "You mean 'drain it'? What does that even mean?"

Clarke flinched, but answered honestly. "I'll need to put a warm compress on it first, heat some water over one of the fires and dip a cloth in the water; that'll help draw all of the infection to the surface. I'll use one of the knives the guys made, boil it to sterilize it and make a small opening to let the infection drain out. Other than that you'll need to drink a lot of water to help your body fight it off."

The process didn't sound too bad until Clarke had mentioned making a small opening in her arm—and in a place that was already tender to the touch. She didn't exactly have faith in the sharpness of the hand-made blades, either.

"If we don't deal with it soon, that could become septic," Clarke continued, pointing at the irritated bullet-graze, "poisoning your blood, and that could lead to you needing your arm removed. So it's up to you."

Well, that made her decision pretty simple. "Ever deliberately cut someone open before?" Cyra asked with a strangled sigh, her head tipping back in her frustration as she folded her arms again, leaving the wound exposed to the open air. The cool brush of the wind helped the heated skin to feel better.

Clarke couldn't look into the heterochromia eyes of the taller woman, so she stared at the metal ramp under their feet. "No."

"Fantastic," Cyra sighed, wiping at her face with one hand. "What do you need me to do? I'd rather get this over with if you don't mind?"

Thinking about the fact that she was about to stab someone's arm to force them to bleed made Clarke want to delay, but the doctor in her knew that that wasn't an option. So she rattled off what Cyra could look for while Clarke prepared the rest, resisting the urge to tell her she might want to find Octavia to hold her hand during the process. Cyra didn't seem like the kind that would want to outwardly show emotion like dependency.


	13. These Bleeding Memories

Clarke looked over the people around camp that she knew had the knives they had formed out of bent metal; she needed one of those knives but she wasn't sure who to ask. Cyra was trying to find something that they could use to boil water, first for a compress to put over the wound and then to sterilize the knife. Clarke was still shaky when she thought about what she was going to do, but she tried her best to put that thought out of her head as her attention centered on Bellamy.

From what she'd seen the past few days, Cyra and Bellamy had grown close. Whether that had to do with Cyra and Octavia's clear connection or not, she didn't know; but hopefully he wouldn't ask too many questions if he knew that it was to help Cyra.

"Hey, Bellamy," she called, interrupting whatever conversation he'd been having with the teams that were tasked with building the wall around the camp. He heaved a sigh at the sound of her voice but nodded his head to dismiss the people that had been listening to his instructions.

"What now, Princess?"

"I need a knife," she stated right off the bat.

Bellamy barked a laugh, crossing his arms as he turned to face her entirely. "Really? And why's that? Scared without the walls of the Skybox to protect you?"

"Cyra's arm is infected and I need a knife to cut it open and drain the infection before it gets worse. She could lose the arm if the infection goes septic," Clarke explained immediately. To her surprise, all of the amusement bled from Bellamy's expression to be replaced with real concern for the mentioned criminal. "So, got a knife I can use?"

"You…want me to give you a knife so you can stab someone?"

Rolling her eyes a tad dramatically, Clarke crossed her arms over her chest as a scowl marred her features. She felt like she was talking in circles, between Cyra's questions and now Bellamy's. "I can ask someone else if you really don't want me to use yours-"

"Fine," he grumbled, hating himself for stepping into her little trap. "You sure you're not just going to make it worse, opening the wound up again?"

"Until I can find what the Grounders used to save Jasper's life, this is the best I can do for her."

Conversation fell silent between the two, leaving them to stare each other down. Both were too stubborn to let the other win the silent staring contest, even with Clarke quite a bit shorter than the man she was squaring off with. Still holding his stare, she quirked an eyebrow and held out her hand to silently demand the blade that she knew he already had on his person.

"Neither of us have all day, so what's it gunna be?"

Cyra didn't have near as much trouble finding what she needed, which was basically something to hold the water they needed to boil. They didn't exactly have pots and pans so she got one of the metal containers that was large enough to hold a couple cups of water; some of the others had been using it basically as a bowl to hold water in while they were working, more so than the metal cups they'd made. She didn't tell the group what she was using it for, but she promised to give it back once she and Clarke were finished with it—cleaned, of course.

Filling it with fresh rain water from one of their barrels and getting a strip of bandages from Monty to use as a compress, she was left to wait to see if Clarke was able to get the blade. They also needed to make a fire they could use away from the others so as to not draw attention.

Cyra really didn't want to have the entire camp watching Clarke attempt to help her by cutting open her bullet graze.

Of course, it's just Cyra's luck that as she waiting at the ramp for Clarke to get back, Wells is the first one to find her. She silently watches him approach, a scowl across his features as soon as he spots her. "What can I do for you, Chancellor?" she mocked, perched on the edge of the ramp with her arms crossed over her chest. Her arm was stinging from the excessive movement as the swollen skin tugged uncomfortably.

"What are you and Clarke up to?"

A snort escaped Cyra before she could help it. "I'm not sure whether or not I should find it amusing that you trust your so-called 'friend' so little."

The glare he'd already been giving her intensified at what she had insinuated. "I trust Clarke, but you're smart and you're manipulative. I don't like whatever you're planning-"

"Yes, it's all a part of a _master plan_ ; getting shot by an idiot who can't aim, then letting that get infected, all so I can coerce your girlfriend into something," Cyra mocked, sarcasm lacing each of her words heavily. "Look, am I going to have to deal with your immature 'you're evil and I'll stop you' beliefs for long? 'Cause it's already getting old."

Wells went to speak again, but something over her shoulder caught his eye and the words died before they'd even left his lips. "Cyra, ready?" Clarke's voice called from behind her, drawing the blonde woman's green and blue eyes over her shoulder to meet Clarke's waiting gaze. The younger of the two didn't look much happier at the sight of Wells than Cyra did, and she realized that was probably the only thing they really had in common.

"Yea," she mumbled, picking up the 'bowl' and the strips of cloth. "You can bitch later, Chancellor." Wells looked pained as he glanced between the two of them, watching as they disappeared behind the dropship. He wanted to tell Clarke what he knew about her, what Cyra had done to land herself in Solitary at the age of fifteen, but he wasn't in the right place with Clarke. She probably wouldn't believe him if he tried.

Clarke had already built of a small separate fire, using a lit stick from the main fire pit to light it, and Cyra placed the filled metal container over two thick sticks that sat parallel above the flames and ambers, elevating the metal over the flames to begin heating the water.

"So, walk me through this," Cyra demanded as she rolled the short sleeve of Bellamy's old shirt up to expose her entire bicep.

"When the water's just warm we'll soak one of the rags in it and press than over the wound until it's cooled; when the water's boiling I'll toss the knife in for a few minutes. We'll need to let the knife cool off before I can do anything. From there I'll need to make a small cut in your arm to drain the infection. I…I'm going to have to press around the cut to push out as much infected blood as I can so that's probably going to be the worst part."

"I dunno, using a knife made of bent, broken metal to cut open a bullet graze sounds pretty shitty to me," Cyra snapped. Stepped back from the fire, Cyra lowered herself onto a log as she watched the flames dancing beneath the bowl. Clarke looked from Cyra to the fire as well, hating the silence that fell between them as she thumbed the knife she had gotten from Bellamy. He'd barely put it into her hand before she'd taken off, not giving him the chance to follow as she went to start on the fire behind the ship.

Only when the water was just before the boiling point did Clarke drop one of the cloths in quickly before she pulled it out again, steam rising from the material as she let some of the water run off of it. "Ring some of the water out and hold it over the infection." Cyra did as instructed, ignoring the sting of the hot water on her hands as she squeezed some of the excess water free.

Pressing the wet cloth to her arm, she repressed a flinch at the sudden touch of heat over the already burning wound, the cut starting to pulse in pain at the additional irritant.

With the water steadily reaching the boiling point, Clarke dropped the knife into the water to let it sterilize, glancing at Cyra as she held the wet bandage over her arm. She hadn't even flinched when the hot material made contact; she knew that wasn't something that was easy to ignore. Even when she'd been bandaging her arm when they got back from saving Jasper, she'd barely reacted.

That kind of pain tolerance…

She'd shadowed her mother at work before, and she'd seen adults cry from less. It made Clarke wonder what Cyra had been like when her mother was meticulously stitching the numerous lacerations on her back. It wasn't a quick process. And that many wounds would have meant hundreds of stitches—hundreds of stabbing through the skin before pulling the thread to follow. In the time's she'd helped her mom, she'd never actually stitched someone herself, but she'd watched the process with flinches and squirms, relieved to have never needed it herself.

Cyra's back was covered in the wounds. She'd probably been sleeping on her stomach for months afterword, nothing but pain pulled through with every movement of her torso.

And that was if the only wounds she had were on her shoulders. For all Clarke knew, there were probably others elsewhere on her pale body, creating silvery lines against white skin.

A rattling noise drew Clarke out of her thoughts and down to the metal bowl, the water sloshing harshly from the heat as the metal knife was rattled around at the bottom from the bubbles that were being produced. Keeping her hands carefully covered, Clarke removed the metal from over the fire and drained most of the water next to the small pit, but was careful not to let the knife fall free and get dirtied again.

Extracting the blade from the remaining water, careful not to touch the metal directly with her fingers, Clarke wrapped one of the bandages Cyra had provided around the handle so as not to burn her fingers. They still needed to let the blade cool more before they could start, but that wouldn't take so long now that it was out of the water.

"Where'd you get that, anyway?" Cyra finally asked. Clarke was surprised she hadn't brought up the owner of the knife sooner, since it was going to be used to cut open her arm.

"Bellamy."

The name made Cyra want to twitch. Of course she went to _him_ of all people. Surely he now knew about what Clarke was planning to do. For some reason it made her feel strange, knowing that Bellamy was aware of her past—at least more so than anyone else—and he was now aware of yet another scar that she was adding to her marred skin. She didn't like it; it made her feel like someone was seeing into her deepest secrets…witnessing the skeletons in her closet.

Unconsciously, Cyra's hand began pressing down harder onto the wound with the rapidly cooling cloth—she didn't realize until a blaze of pain made the muscles in her arm jump. Drawing the material away sharply, the blonde woman glanced down at the inflamed skin as she shook the limb slightly to spread out the burn and pulse that had abruptly occurred.

"Ready?" Clarke asked when she saw Cyra pull the cloth away and assumed that meant it had gone cold and was now useless. Tapping her fingers along the knife to confirm that it was cool enough not to cauterize Cyra's skin accidentally—she didn't want to kill anymore tissue—Clarke moved to sit next to her on the log Cyra had claimed.

"Don't warn me," Cyra advised as she forced herself to relax her arm, her muscles loosening beneath Clarke's hand. She stared forward with a hard expression.

Clarke only hesitated a moment with the point of the sterilized blade above Cyra's reddened skin, taking a steadying breath as she did her best to remember every lesson her mother ever tried to convey. Then, doing as Cyra had requested, Clarke pressed the tip of the jagged, handmade knife into the softened scab.

Cyra's arm immediately locked up, no matter how hard she tried to keep it relaxed, but as the murky blood and infection bled from the wound she kept absolutely silent. A long, drawn out exhale was the only sign of her discomfort as Clarke created an inch long incision on the infected wound, letting the pressure begin the process of pushing it from Cyra's body.

"Flex your arm," she advised, shifting back to watch Cyra began with making a fist, curling her arm at the elbow slightly as the blood in her arm began to flow, causing the trickle to increase into a stream that was soon dripping off her elbow, hitting the log between them. The blood wasn't a thick, dark red as it should have been because of the infection, telling Clarke that it was probably a lot worse than she'd first thought.

Cyra, on the other hand, barely felt a thing. There had been the initial sting, the break of skin and the rush of blood and infection that flowed from the wound, but then it had all just faded into background static in her mind. Distantly, she hard Clarke's order did as she was bid, tensing the muscles in her arm to increase blood flow.

" _Now just hold still, sweetheart."_

" _All this for a few credits? Haven't we gotten lucky, boys."_

Pain rippled along Cyra's back, her shoulders shuddering alongside the feeling as she stared blankly ahead. Clarke continued to diligently work on the other woman, assuming the faint shudder was that she was finally reacting to the pain.

In truth, it _was_ pain that was drawing the reaction. Just not the pain that Clarke was causing.

" _What did you do?" a male voice boomed above Cyra—she swore it shook the very walls of the room—before the sickening crack of worn, worked leather met the back of her shoulder in a splitting burn. "What the_ fuck _did you do?" Another crack and the pain was worse this time, the hot rush of blood feeling like a brand against her cold skin, the icy sweat that had collected along her pale body leaving her shivering._

_She did something. What did she do?_

_A constant, loud ringing filled her ears and the left side of her head felt like it had its own pulse, throbbing in time with the new wounds on her back. The same heat that swelled over her shoulder blade was spreading against the side of her face. Her eye was stinging—something was in her eye. It was hot and thick, made it impossible to blink properly._

_What_ did _she do?_

 _She just wanted the pain to_ stop _._

"Cyra!"

The older woman flinched at the sudden shout that was followed by a sharp stinging pain in her hand. She glanced to the side, where the shout had originated, until her eyes fell of the startled, mildly horrified stare of Clarke Griffin.

However, Clarke's attention was focused lower. Cyra followed her line of sight to see what had caught the other woman's attention, and had drawn such a sound of distress of her. The knife that had been cutting into her arm, and causing the pain that had made her old scars to sting and itch uncomfortably, was still clutched in Clarke's hand—with Cyra's larger, pale hand clasped overtop. Hot blood pooling over Clarke's tense fingers from a new cut in Cyra's palm, the metal of the makeshift knife still settled in her skin.

The sight of the bright red liquid along their hands, the knife completely masked beneath, caused Cyra's fingers to twitch, tightening a moment, before she draw them away. She could feel the blade as it drew from her flesh, leaving a fresh, deep gouge in her palm. Turning her hand over, fingers splayed open, more blood quickly welled to the surface and spilled over to cause a steady cascade over the side of her hand.

Flexing her palm flat, more blood was coaxed to the surface, causing a trail to begin sliding along her wrist.

"Cyra!" Clarke snapped again, dropping the knife without another thought to quickly snatch up the last bandage they had, originally meant to wrap around her arm, and quickly press down on the woman's bleeding hand.

Just across the dropship, at the edge of the campsite, Octavia stilled in her work at the sound of Clarke's voice echoing into the camp. Was she yelling at Cyra again? Those two went together like oil and water, it wouldn't be a surprise for them to get into another argument when they were on their own. She'd seen them go off together, more than likely to take care of Cyra's arm as the older woman had warned.

Sighing softly as she abandoned her work, Octavia turned in the direction the others had gone. A couple of yards back, Bellamy, too, had stopped in his work at the distant sound of the shout. He watched his sister make her way from the camp at a quick stride, bypassing the dropship as she went. Of course she'd go off on her own again, completely ignoring the warnings that he'd put out to everyone about the threat of nearby Grounders.

"Dude, just let her be," one of the guys tried to coax, but Bellamy shot him a glare before he broke away from them in favor of following his sister. She was his responsibility; being on Earth didn't change that. He'd already let her get caught once because of a decision he had made, he wasn't about to put her life at risk for a second time.

Jogging to catch up with Octavia, Bellamy rounded the dropship in time to see Octavia drop to her knees in front of Cyra, the older woman's hand clasped tightly between hers. Clarke had stepped back, off to the side, but her hand was bright red with blood and her face had gone shock-pale. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded before he could think more on what he was seeing. He'd known Clarke's plan, but he'd assumed she knew what she was doing.

Cyra looked like a corpse. Her face was so pale her lips appeared blue and her eyes were unfocused, staring blankly in the direction of the hand that Octavia was now clutching. The bullet graze that Wells had caused was trickling a steady stream of blood—it looked murky and discoloured, showing how bad the infection had actually gotten—and she was showing no response of pain or recognition to what was going on around her.

"That…that's a…she has-"

"Clarke!" Bellamy shouted, his concern for the malnourished woman morphing into anger as the doctor-in-training just stuttered and bumbled over her worlds.

"It's like she's in shock, but it's more like a flashback," Clarke explained with such speed that her words were momentarily jumbled to the other two present.

"Flashback?" Octavia repeated, still pressing on Cyra's hand to stem the flow of blood. She'd come around the corner as Clarke was desperately trying to stop the flow of blood from Cyra's hand while also calling to the woman to try and regain her focus on the present. The sight of Cyra looking so pale and out of it had jolted Octavia into a run, momentarily thinking the worst at the sight of blood all over their hands.

Clarke went to speak before she realized that they might not know; they might be in the dark about Cyra's scars. Was that really her secret to tell?

"Something must have happened…before. She's remembering it," Clarke evaded shakily, but Octavia was so focused on the task at hand that she didn't notice the brief hesitation from Clarke. Bellamy did. He knew _exactly_ what Clarke was talking about, probably more so than Clarke herself. Cyra was remembering the night of the guards, when her back had been torn to pieces. Clarke knew about the scars, so she was probably smart enough to connect the dots, but she didn't know the full extent.

_I fought off the guards, stopped them from doing anything, and my dad beat me into a hospital bed._

Bellamy moved to kneel beside his sister, trying to ignore the sick feeling that came with the sight of blood leaking through her fingers. How badly was Cyra cut? How did she _get_ cut?

"What happened?" he asked Clarke with his attention on Cyra; resting the back of his hand on her cheek proved her to be chilled to the touch, her blood fleeing from her face as her mind was caught in the past.

"I cut the old scab of her arm to drain the infection—she'd been fine up until then—and she just tensed for a moment. I thought it was a reaction to the pain, like a flinch. But then she reached out and grabbed the knife without even looking, it stabbed into her palm. She didn't seem to realize anything until I yelled her name. But…even then, all she did was pull her hand back and stare at it. Watch the blood."

Taking her face gently between his hands, her flesh like ice beneath his touch, Bellamy forced her to look up at him instead of at her hand. "Cyra, you need to focus. Listen to me; you're on _Earth_. You're _not_ with them; you're _not_ on the Ark. Just look at me. Bellamy, you remember? And Octavia?"

As soon as he mentioned his sister, Bellamy paused as he remembered what his sibling had told him. _She was all I had. Her voice. I like to think that my voice was something important to her, too. That someone depended on me for once._

"Octavia, speak to her," he ordered, never looking away from Cyra's heterochromia eyes. "She knows your voice better than anyone."

Octavia blinked in shock, not having thought of that, before she swallowed passed the lump of terror that had lodged itself in her throat. "Cyra, do you remember when I was first put into Solitary? I was so scared, but you talk me down. You just sat with me for hours and talked to me through that nasty old grate. You told me about the kind woman who'd helped raise you since you were a baby. You used to be obsessed with her necklace; it wasn't anything special, but you'd just sit there and stare at it for hours if you could. It was a family heirloom."

Bellamy watched Cyra's eyes carefully as his sister spoke, recounting stories that Cyra had told her over the time they'd been locked up. Her focus would flicker every now and then, her eyes darting toward the sound of Octavia's voice.

After a few minutes of the younger Blake speaking, Cyra's hand began to close around the brunette's fingers loosely. Then she release a long breath and let her eyes fall closed, head bowing slightly to let her hair fall in front of her face. "Cyra?" Bellamy asked carefully. His hands still framed her face, but he let her move as she wished.

"I'm sorry," she choked out, her voice sounding raw, as though she had been screaming.

No one answered, but Octavia sighed in relief as her head came to rest on her friend's knee, relaxing her tense posture. Bellamy let his shoulders relax as well, his thumbs gently stroking the skin of Cyra's cheeks as they warmed beneath his touch.


End file.
